{"id":26765,"date":"2011-09-30T08:54:52","date_gmt":"2011-09-30T12:54:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=26765"},"modified":"2011-09-30T11:12:41","modified_gmt":"2011-09-30T15:12:41","slug":"your-free-healthcare-just-got-more-expensive","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=26765","title":{"rendered":"Your free healthcare just got more expensive"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Defense Department announced a premium increase for your Tricare premiums. Nice of them to wait until they were told to raise premiums by Congress, wasn’t it? The Associated Press<\/a> likes to refer to the increases as “just a fraction of what civilians pay”, “modest” and “slightly more”;<\/p>\n

Military retirees will pay slightly more for their health care starting Saturday, and more cost increases are on the way.<\/p>\n

Premiums haven’t been raised since 1994 and still will be just a fraction of what civilians pay. Under a change announced by the Defense Department on Thursday, individuals who enroll in the retiree program as of Saturday will pay $260 annually, up from $230, and it will be $520 annually for a family, up from $460.<\/p>\n

Retirees already in the program will not see any increase until next year because they have already paid for this year. But “modest annual increases” are planned in the future, Cynthia Smith, a Pentagon spokeswoman, said.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It doesn’t matter how much the increase is, it’s 100% higher than “none” which is what the government promised when we decided to make a career out of the military and make the sacrifices we made in exchange for this benefit.<\/p>\n

But don’t worry, DoD has unilaterally decided that you can afford this and future increases, despite what your own budget math might show;<\/p>\n

Gates particularly singled out working-age retirees – those in their 40s who retired after 20 years in the military and can go on to second careers, meaning they are likely to be able to afford a small increase, he said.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

“Likely”? What if it’s “unlikely” that a veteran can’t afford to pay the higher premiums? What benefits are Education Department or EPA retirees willing to sacrifice to balance the budget? Has anyone even asked them?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Defense Department announced a premium increase for your Tricare premiums. Nice of them to wait … Your free healthcare just got more expensive<\/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],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-26765","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-veteran-health-care"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26765","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=26765"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26765\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=26765"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=26765"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=26765"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}