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believe our military and retired military personnel as well as their
families are entitled to free government health care. That being said,
I find it hard to believe that someone whose whole family receives free
government-provided health care should consider it such an evil thing
for those in our society who desperately need health care but cannot
get it. Seems pretty hypocritical to me.
Joe Wilson's Dirty Health-Care Secret
Newsweek
 All
in the Family: Rep. Joe Wilson (left) and his son, Alan Wilson, who is
running for attorney general in South Carolina. Both men, and three of
Rep. Wilson’s other sons, get free military medical coverage.
By Adam Weinstein
Poor
Joe Wilson. The conservative Republican representative from South
Carolina stepped in it Wednesday night when he broke with centuries of
decorum by screaming, "You lie!" at President Obama during his
health-care speech to a joint session of Congress.
Cut the man some slack. He's passionate! I know this because he told me, in the sole message that blazes across his campaign Web site: JOE WILSON IS PASSIONATE ABOUT STOPPING GOVERNMENT RUN HEALTH CARE!
Except
that he's not─at least not when it comes to his, and his family's,
government-run health care. As a retired Army National Guard colonel,
Wilson gets a lot of benefits (one of which, apparently, was not a full
appreciation of the customs, traditions, and courtesies that mandate
respect for one's commander in chief).
And
with four sons in the armed services, the entire Wilson brood has
enjoyed multiple generations of free military medical coverage, known
as TRICARE.
Yes,
it's true. As politicos and town-hall criers debate the finer points of
the public option, employer mandates, coverage for undocumented
immigrants, and who's more Hitler-like, they seem to miss a larger
point: the United States has single-payer health care.
It
covers 9.5 million active-duty servicemen and women, military retirees,
and their dependents─including almost a 10th of all Californians and
Floridians, and nearly a quarter of a million residents of Wilson's
home state.
Military
beneficiaries like Wilson─who, as a retiree, is eligible for lifetime
coverage─never have to worry about an eye exam, a CT scan, a prolonged
labor, or an open-heart surgery. They have access not only to the
military's 133,500 uniformed health professionals, but cooperating
private doctors as well─whose fees are paid by the Department of
Defense.
It's
high-quality care, too: surveys from 2007 and 2008 list TRICARE among
"the best health insurer(s) in the nation" by customer satisfaction.
Yet Wilson insists government-run health care is a problem.
To
be fair, Wilson has been consistent in his policymaking if not his
personal life: according to his last congressional opponent, Wilson voted 11 times against health care for veterans in eight years, even as he voted "aye" for the Iraq War (during the debate on the war vote, he even called one Democrat "viscerally anti-American"─several times).
He
voted to cut veterans' benefits─not his own─to make room for President
George W. Bush's tax cuts. He repeatedly voted for budgets that slashed
funding to the Veterans Administration and TRICARE.
And
perhaps most bizarrely, he refused─repeatedly─to approve Democratic-led
initiatives that would have extended TRICARE coverage to all reservists
and National Guard members, even though a disproportionate number of
them have served multiple tours in Iraq and Afghanistan─and many lost
access to their civilian work benefits when they did so.
There's
one other notable exception to Wilson's tough-on-government record: In
July, when the health-insurance debate just started heating up, he
offered an amendment that would exempt TRICARE from any system of
employer mandates in a health-care bill. It's not clear whether this is
necessary, since most such bills in Congress keep government benefits
exempt from the rules as a matter of course. But Wilson took the
opportunity to make his stand.
"As a 31-year Army Guard and Reserve veteran, I know the importance of TRICARE," he said in a press release.
"The number of individuals who choose to enroll in TRICARE continues to
rise because TRICARE is a low cost, comprehensive health plan that is
portable and available in some form world-wide." He went on to call
TRICARE "world class health care," concluding on a personal note. "I am
grateful to have four sons now serving in the military, and I know that
their families appreciate the availability of TRICARE," he said.
What
does that mean? Nothing─except that Joe Wilson was against
government-run health care before he was for it. And now he's against
it again. Just not when it comes to his own flesh and blood.
 Adam Weinstein, an Iraq veteran, is a freelance journalist. He is uninsured.
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