On Thursday, Defense Secretary Robert Gates called the military\u2019s future health care costs \u201cunaffordable\u201d and said the department could save up to $7 billion over the next five years with modest increases in Tricare fees for working-age retirees. Active-duty troops and their families would not be affected by the plan.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe current Tricare enrollment fee was set in 1995 at $460 a year for the basic family plan and has not been raised since,\u201d Gates told reporters. \u201cDuring this time, insurance premiums paid by the private sector and other government workers have risen dramatically. For example, the fees for a comparable health insurance program for federal workers cost roughly $5,000 per year.\u201d<\/p>\n
As a result, he said, many of those retirees forgo their employer\u2019s health plan to remain with Tricare, creating a heavy burden on the defense budget.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Yeah, we forego our employers’ health plan because part of the reason that we stayed on in the military was that the government promised us free health care for the remainder of our lives. We knew our pensions were going to be a pittance and the prospect of dependable health care sweetened retirement. We earned our health care in good faith.<\/p>\n
We worked, did our best and stuck it out through rough times because we had faith in our government keeping it’s promises. We were there every time you called, now we get this shit. We paid and you’re reneging.<\/p>\n
And, oh, it WILL affect active duty soldiers when it’s their turn as retirees. The active duty military doesn’t stay in a static pool. Think they’re going to make a career out of the military when they see how we are getting treated?<\/p>\n
And in 2009, veterans groups lashed out at the White House when officials there resurrected the idea.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
You ain’t seen nothing yet, ass wipe.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Since before the 2008 elections I’ve been predicting that Democrats will try to make it look … More predictions becoming reality<\/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":[118],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-21755","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-veterans-issues"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21755","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=21755"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21755\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=21755"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=21755"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=21755"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}