GUESS WE DIDN'T SACRIFICE ENOUGH

Of course we use civilian doctors. There aren't enough military ones to go around. Bunch of cowards in my opinion. Wish they had followed me around for 28 years. Raising babies and mowing lawns with a push mower.

USA Today: TRICARE is ‘Too Sweet a Deal’

June 2, 2011 • TERRY HOWELL

A recent head­line in USA Today’s edi­to­r­ial sec­tion reads, “Our view: Military’s TRICARE Ben­e­fits are Too Sweet a Deal.” [I’ll let you pause on that thought for moment] Of course they come to this con­clu­sion with the help of Defense Sec­re­tary Gates’ state­ments like, TRICARE is “eat­ing the DoD alive.”

Gates has been seek­ing to reduce the cost of mil­i­tary com­pen­sa­tion since he took the reins at DoD dur­ing the lat­ter Bush years, so it is no sur­prise that the national media would begin to respond as the USA Today editor’s have. But to call it “too sweet of a deal” may not set well with most mil­i­tary retirees.

The edi­to­r­ial con­cedes that health insur­ance for mil­i­tary retirees is “meant to be inex­pen­sive, as part of the com­pen­sa­tion for ser­vice­mem­bers’ sac­ri­fice.” But, USA Today tells read­ers, “The issue is how gen­er­ous tax­pay­ers should be in giv­ing mil­i­tary retirees insur­ance that cov­ers treat­ment by civil­ian hos­pi­tals and doc­tors.”

The recently passed House defense bud­get includes a TRICARE Prime pre­mium increase, which if passed by the Sen­ate, would boost the annual enroll­ment fee to $520. USA Today says that the pro­posed TRICARE fee increases “don’t go far enough.”

Most retirees under­stand that a fee increase for TRICARE Prime is needed to sus­tain the pro­gram. The dis­cus­sion has most recently cen­tered how much of an increase and to which health care price index TRICARE Prime pre­mi­ums should be tied.

The arti­cle asks read­ers to com­pare TRICARE pre­mi­ums to those in the civil­ian world where “the aver­age worker with employer-provided insur­ance pays about $4,000 a year for a fam­ily plan.” Any­one with any mil­i­tary expe­ri­ence would argue that the com­par­i­son is hardly fair, con­sid­er­ing the level of sac­ri­fice and hard­ship most retirees endure to make it through 20 years in the mil­i­tary.

In the oppos­ing view (also posted on USA Today), Norb Ryan, Pres­i­dent of the Mil­i­tary Offi­cers Asso­ci­a­tion of Amer­ica, wrote, “Those push­ing much big­ger increases to make the mil­i­tary pack­age more like civil­ians’ ignore the rad­i­cal dif­fer­ences between civil­ian and mil­i­tary work­ing con­di­tions.”

Read Admi­ral Ryan’s full response.

I am sure most of our read­ers are won­der­ing how the USA Today feels about the Con­gres­sional Health Care Plan or Med­ic­aid and Medicare for that mat­ter.

Read more: http://militaryadvantage.military.com/2011/06/usa-today-tricare-is-too-sweet-a-deal/#ixzz1OXGMiHvC
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