President won’t budge on veteran insurance proposal March 16th, 2009 Regular readers will remember the exchange I wrote about last week in which Eric Shinseki the new VA director proposed a system to force veterans to buy insurance to treat their service-connected injuries from a Stars and Stripes article; The administration is considering charging veterans’ health insurance plans earned through civilian employment for VA’s costs in treating service-connected injuries or ailments.The VA already taps “third party†insurance plans for treatment of non-service-related conditions. Collections in fiscal 2008 totaled $2.4 billion. The VA expects to collect $2.5 billion this year. The...