Let's Honor Our Veterans - by Revoking Their Benefits

My friends, I'm writing to bring to your attention a great injustice. We here in the United States have been party to an unpardonable breach of trust. We have wronged and betrayed those members of our society to whom we owe the most - our land, our freedoms, even our very lives. I'm talking about our veterans, those brave men and women who have served, and are currently serving in our armed forces. I, like all good Americans, treasure our veterans, and think it's high time we liberate these courageous servicemen and -women from the iron-fisted government-run tyranny in which they have been trapped for decades.

The time has come to honor our veterans - by taking away their government-provided healthcare.

Our precious veterans are imprisoned within a socialist government healthcare system! Did you know that the Department of Veterans Affairs - a branch of the U.S. Federal government! - provides healthcare services to any eligible veteran of the U.S. military who enrolls? If this doesn't freeze the very blood in your veins, well, friends, it ought to! To think that the United States of America, the freest, noblest, most democratic nation in the history of the world, forces the members of its military into a government-run healthcare system . . . frankly, it makes me want to vomit.

Low-income veterans, those with service-connected disabilities, former prisoners of war, and recipients of the Purple Heart may receive healthcare services at no cost to them whatsoever. Don't our veterans deserve better than this?

But it gets worse: those enrolled in this government-run health system, in order to better facilitate access to their benefits, are issued government ID cards. I, for one, think our brave soldiers, sailors, airmen and marines should not be issued ID cards from Big Brother! For God's sake, not in the United States of America! What's next? Implanted microchips?

No, my friends. We owe our veterans and their families much more than guaranteed access to low- or no-cost health services, including discounts on prescription drugs, mental health counseling, bereavement counseling, and emergency treatment at non-VA facilities. It's time to end these socialistic government benefits and allow all our veterans, whatever their service status, whatever their personal income, to purchase their own insurance and join the rest of us in the vastly superior private healthcare system.

"But Steve," some of you godless, un-American Stalinists may be saying, "aren't our veterans already able to purchase their own private insurance to supplement their government benefits? Don't many of them do just that?"

First of all, if you think they have such great healthcare in England, why don't you just move there and leave the rest of us alone? Where I went to school, they taught us that we won that war, baby. "Spot 'o tea?" No thank you, John Bull.

Second, of course veterans are allowed to buy their own insurance (for now), but the availability of free or low-cost government-provided services make them less likely to buy private insurance, or more likely to buy cheaper supplemental insurance only. I say it's high time the government gets out the way and allows our beloved veterans to make the same honest choice as hundreds of millions of their fellow Americans: private health insurance or nothing.

Our healthcare system here in the United States is the best in the entire world! (Unless you believe those commies at the World Health Organization, who in 2000, after evaluating the American healthcare system objectively across a wide range of categories, ranked it at #37, behind both Canada and Great Britain, and Colombia and Costa Rica and the Dominican Republic, to name just a few. Boooooo!) It's time our veterans had a chance to take part in it!

Imagine how damaging it must be to the spirit of our fighting men and women, to return home wounded from the theater of war, knowing they won't have to navigate the complicated and baffling bureaucracy of a private insurance company, knowing they don't have to worry about how they will pay for the medical care and procedures they need to survive. That's got to be an arrow through any warrior's heart. My own grandfather was involved in a serious car accident in 1951, toward the end of his service in the U.S. Navy. He needed major reconstructive surgery on his face, and spent a few months at Bethesda Naval Hospital on the government's dime. I don't know for sure, because he never said anything like this, but I can only assume that it haunted him for the rest of his life.

Moving our military members into the private insurance system will cause morale to skyrocket, but it will have other benefits as well. For instance, our troops will be more careful in combat. Knowing that a pre-existing condition like severe brain damage or a missing leg would make it virtually impossible for them to find a private insurer willing to cover them, they will be less likely to engage in unnecessary heroics to protect their comrades or accomplish their missions. How many limbs have been lost by troops chasing that Purple Heart, and the guaranteed free health services it carries? Never again!

Finally, my friends, we must end government healthcare for our troops for the good of the rest of us. It's bad enough that our precious troops are subjected to socialist medicine, but even now dark forces within our government are working to impress the same tyranny on all Americans - yes, even you and me! Think it won't happen? Don't be so sure! There is still a slim chance that reformers in Congress will succeed in imposing low-cost health coverage on all citizens regardless of income, employment status, or pre-existing conditions. First it was seatbelts and speed limits, then taxes on cigarettes, now this! Where will it end - martial law and internment in forced labor camps?

Americans, rally to my cry! Write and call your Republican senators and representatives (nevermind the Demon-crats - most of them are lost causes, anyway!) and urge them to have the courage of their convictions and end government health benefits for veterans! If socialized medicine isn't good enough for the rest of us, then it's sure as hell not good enough for the best of us!

In closing, let me just say thank you for your time, and may God bless all of you who share my principles and beliefs. U-S-A! U-S-A! U-S-A!