But they should be outraged at the news now trickling out that the real reason veterans were left dangling by their lawmakers was a bout of petty squabbling between a senator and a representative that evolved into a brawl between the leaders of Senate and the House.
The sad saga began when Rep. Becky Lockhart, R-Provo, and Sen. Chris Buttars, R-West Jordan, sponsored similar bills designed to break the practice of insurance companies refusing to cover care provided by a doctor outside the company's network.
Both bills intended to help consumers by allowing them to seek care from doctors of their own choice, rather than those dictated by a monopolistic health care conglomerate.
But the initial noble goal of doing something good for the public eventually took a back seat to the egos of the legislators.
Buttars' legislation, Senate Bill 34, passed the Senate for the final time on Feb. 24. It then sat in the House Rules Committee without a public airing from Feb. 24 to March 2. Lockhart is chairman of the House Rules Committee and senators began grumbling that she was sitting on Buttars' bill so her bill would pass instead.
Lockhart's bill, House Bill 272, passed in the House by an overwhelming 73-0 margin with two absent. That vote occurred on Feb. 28 while Buttars' bill still languished in Lockhart's Rules Committee.
But Buttars would have his revenge.
Lockhart's bill came to a vote on the Senate floor on March 2. It failed by one vote. Buttars voted against it, even though it would have achieved the same goal his bill would have achieved.
Buttars' SB34 then eventually died in the House Rules Committee without a public debate on the House floor.
Tempers, by the final week of the legislative session, were flaring and some legislators involved in back-room teeming during that time say that is what finally burned the veterans' nursing home appropriation.
The nursing home bill, sponsored by Rep. Greg Buxton, R-Roy, passed the House, but never got an airing in the Senate. It instead became a pawn in behind-the-scenes bickering between the Republican leaders of the House and Senate.
The bill would have provided $4.5 million as the matching funds needed for an $8.2 million ante by the Veterans Administration to construct a nearly $13 million fully equipped nursing home on land in Weber County already donated to the veterans through the efforts of Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah.
Senators expressed concerns that the Utah nursing home was low on a long list of V.A. funding needs across the country. The $4.5 million appropriation would not guarantee the nursing home would be built. But Buxton thought he had alleviated those concerns by getting assurances from V.A. and military officials that the Utah appropriations would move the Ogden nursing home up on the priority list and give it a good chance of making the V.A.'s funding list.
Senators also complained that after the Legislature funded a veterans' nursing home in Salt Lake City several years ago, the veterans came back for more money for the project in subsequent sessions. Buxton also got assurances that wouldn't happen this time and he noted that with the V.A. nursing home, the feds would pay $60 per diem expenses daily for each resident, or about $2.6 million a year. But Buxton was up against a torrent of resentment toward the House.
Buttars had sponsored a bill called the Drug Offenders Rehabilitation Act (DORA) that would provide treatment for drug offenders who had committed crimes. That would have cost the state about $6 million the first year, then a little more each year after that.
The Senate liked DORA and in negotiations between the leaders of the Senate and House, DORA was offered as trade bait. If the House passed DORA, the Senate would pass the veterans' nursing home.
The negotiations were not made in the Executive Appropriations Committee, the forum for finalizing funding priorities. They were conducted among just the Republican leaders, without the Democrats.
And it got ugly.
Buttars publicly accused leaders of the House of "playing games." House leaders said they wre being blackmailed by the Senate. Speaker Greg Curtis, R-Sandy, and Majority Leader Jeff Alexander, R-Provo, reportedly exploded into temper tantrums during a closed-door meeting with senators two days before the end of the session.
The arguments continued until the final hour of the legislative session, but both bills died at the stroke of midnight on the last night.
Buxton, meanwhile, broke the bad news to George Whalen, Utah's only living recipient of the Medal of Honor for his heroics in World War II.
"I told him we would try again next year," said Buxton. "He told me he wasn't sure if he would still be around next year."
