{"id":21333,"date":"2010-11-29T09:36:50","date_gmt":"2010-11-29T13:36:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=21333"},"modified":"2010-11-29T09:36:50","modified_gmt":"2010-11-29T13:36:50","slug":"gates-targets-retiree-health-care","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=21333","title":{"rendered":"Gates targets retiree health care"},"content":{"rendered":"

The New York Times<\/a> warns us that the Defense Secretary is coming for our health benefits…once a-fucking-gain;<\/p>\n

Of nearly 4.5 million military retirees and their families, about three-quarters are estimated to have access to health insurance through a civilian employer or group. But more than two million of them stay on Tricare. As the costs of private health care continue to climb, their numbers are only expected to grow.<\/p>\n

Now, as part of a broad offensive to cut Pentagon spending, that group is once again in the sights of Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates, who is seriously considering whether to ask for Tricare fee increases in next year\u2019s budget \u2014 and perhaps start one of the last fights of his public career. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

See, the problem with raising Tricare fees, is that it not only impacts retirees, but also active duty recruiters, active duty ROTC instructors and, the last time I checked, the whole base at Fort Drum. Since there’s no hospital on Drum, the active duty troops there (about 10,000) and their families go downtown to the Watertown Hospital…and pay co-pays for their treatment. <\/p>\n

And so what if retirees skip their employers’ health care plan and opt for Tricare instead. We earned it. If you were anything like I was, you knew the monthly payments were going to be shit and you planned on the free healthcare to be worth the twenty years of shit-pay, shit-hours and shit-lifestyle. We paid upfront for our “free” health care. Unfortunately, we thought the government was serious when they offered it to us, now every time a Democrat weasels his way into the White House, we have to fight for them all over again. Remember Bill Clinton threw all retirees over 65 onto Medicare and pulled your military health care? <\/p>\n

Just like we do without a COLA increase this year, we’re also going to get another broken promise of health care. Gates only has a year left in his office, so guess how soon he can inflict this abomination on us?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The New York Times warns us that the Defense Secretary is coming for our health benefits…once … Gates targets retiree health care<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[86,118],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-21333","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-veteran-health-care","category-veterans-issues"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21333","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=21333"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21333\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=21333"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=21333"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=21333"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}