A federal appeals court agreed with the Defense Department that veterans promised they would get free lifetime health care if they stayed in the service 20 years do not have valid contracts because the assurances were not backed up by law. Read the AP story on Yahoo.
What goes through the mind of the bureaucrats and judges involved in this malarkey? Whose idea was it to cut benefits to the one group of people in this country who have done something to earn them?
Bureaucrats are easy to predict, and given a mission to cut costs, they did so. The fact that their judgement was poor is magnified because no one on the chain of command cared enough to put a stop to this pettiness. How sad it must be for veterans who must feel slighted by the very people they served under.
The judges in the appellate court are, unfortunately, also easy to predict. Judges are, in too many cases, interested primarily in the letter of law, not the intent behind it. True justice is not allowed to enter the equation. The result: verdicts like this one. With a vote of 9-4 against the veterans’ claim to what they were promised by the federal government, it’s obvious they did not consider right and wrong in making their decision.