Bush opposes health plan for National Guard

The Bush administration is formally opposing a proposal to give National Guard and Reserve members access to the Pentagon’s health-insurance system, jeopardizing the plan’s future and angering supporters.

The proposal would give more than 1.2 million Guard and Reserve members the right to buy health coverage through the Pentagon even when they are not on active duty. The Senate has attached the plan to a nearly $87 billion bill to pay for fighting and reconstruction in Iraq and Afghanistan.

A recent General Accounting Office report estimated that one of every five Guard members has no health insurance.

The administration, in stating its objections, said the health-care proposal is too expensive. It would cost $400 million per year....

--Gannett News Service/Statesman Journal (Salem, Orgon)

So we can afford the $87 billion to carry out the neocons' geostrategic opium dream, but we can't afford $400 million for the poor bastards who are actually carrying it out.

But, of course, this is what you get when CEOs run the country: they stint on full-time workers and then dump as much work as possible on people who don't get benefits. Why should Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld's USA, Inc., be different from any other American company?