President Obama has, thankfully, dropped the asinine idea of making some veterans pay for service-related injuries through private insurance.

David Rehbein, national commander of the American Legion, who met with President Obama, White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel, and Veterans Affairs Secretary Eric Shinseki on Monday, on XM’s POTUS this morning:

It’s not just the veteran, it’s the family . . . One of the things that comes with health insurance is a lifetime cap on treatment, and sometimes an annual cap. With service related injuries, those costs can be very high, particularly when you think of amputees and injuries of that nature. For these veterans, that annual maximum could be reached early in the year, and the rest of the family could end up with no coverage for the remainder of the year.
There was a second meeting in the White House yesterday. [Emanuel] received the united opposition from the veterans groups in that meeting…
I think [the President] realized this was the wrong time to ruin what was turning out to be a very good first impression . . . We’re very pleased that it turned out this way, and we’re very pleased that those of you in the media gave us the chance to make our views clear.

I can’t begrudge Rehbein for not dwelling on the fact that the administration was considering this proposal in the first place. But really, aren’t we now past the first impression?