{"id":29423,"date":"2012-04-07T16:55:36","date_gmt":"2012-04-07T20:55:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=29423"},"modified":"2012-04-07T16:55:36","modified_gmt":"2012-04-07T20:55:36","slug":"your-healthcare-costs-are-rising-to-pay-for-panettas-trips-home","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=29423","title":{"rendered":"Your healthcare costs are rising to pay for Panetta&#8217;s trips home"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Two articles in the Stars &#038; Stripes today that kind of tell you how much the Pentagon thinks of your service. <a href=\"http:\/\/www.stripes.com\/news\/older-retirees-surprised-to-be-in-fresh-tricare-fight-1.173759\">In one article<\/a>, they highlight how your share of healthcare costs are rising;<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\u201cIt\u2019s just a slap in the face,\u201d said [Air Force Master Sgt. Floyd Sears, 81] who retired in 1971 and receives $1789 a month in military retirement.  \u201cIt\u2019s an insult, a real insult, that we would get pushed around like that.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The TLF fee, if Congress were to agree to it, would be \u201ctiered\u201d based on level of retired pay.  Retirees who draw less than $22,590 a year in military retired pay would pay $35 to enroll in [Tricare for Life (TFL)] for the fiscal year beginning Oct. 1.  The fee would climb annually to reach $150 by 2016.  Thereafter it would be adjusted yearly to keep pace with the percentage rise in nationwide health care costs.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>But, the kicker is <a href=\"http:\/\/ap.stripes.com\/dynamic\/stories\/U\/US_PANETTA_CALIFORNIA_COMMUTE?SITE=DCSAS&#038;SECTION=HOME&#038;TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&#038;CTIME=2012-04-06-07-13-09\">in the second article<\/a>, about how Leon Panetta takes his private Secretary of Defense plane back to California every Friday and returns every Sunday night to DC.<\/p>\n<p>So while retirees are facing unprecedented healthcare cost increases, Panetta can&#8217;t spend a few weekends every year in DC and save the taxpayers a few $32,000 trips to California so he can spend the weekend watching his DVR&#8217;d primetime shows.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Two articles in the Stars &#038; Stripes today that kind of tell you how much the &hellip; <a title=\"Your healthcare costs are rising to pay for Panetta&#8217;s trips home\" class=\"hm-read-more\" href=\"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=29423\"><span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Your healthcare costs are rising to pay for Panetta&#8217;s trips home<\/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":[189,86],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-29423","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-defense-cuts","category-veteran-health-care"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29423","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=29423"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29423\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=29423"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=29423"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=29423"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}