{"id":31298,"date":"2012-08-04T20:18:17","date_gmt":"2012-08-05T00:18:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=31298"},"modified":"2012-08-04T21:00:38","modified_gmt":"2012-08-05T01:00:38","slug":"tricare-defends-fee-hikes-in-face-of-708m-surplus","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=31298","title":{"rendered":"Tricare defends fee hikes in face of $708m surplus"},"content":{"rendered":"

Yeah, about that whole not balancing the federal budget on the backs of veterans thing, Tricare admitted that they have a surplus now, but they still want fee increases recommended by Leon Panetta’s Defense Department, according to the Stars & Stripes<\/a>;<\/p>\n

Instead, in the first six months of the fiscal year, private sector health costs grew at \u201chistorically low rates,\u201d according to budget documents. The rate was only 0.6 percent for active duty. More surprising, private sector care costs for retirees, their families and survivors actually fell 2.7 percent.<\/p>\n

As a result, the health program has a $708 million surplus, which the department wants to \u201creprogram\u201d into other accounts to cover higher than expected fuel prices, the unscheduled deployment of a second aircraft carrier to the Middle East, and higher transportation costs tied to Pakistan\u2019s closure of the main land route for U.S. supplies into Afghanistan.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

So, apparently, retirees are supposed to pay to deploy an aircraft carrier? What fuel price increases does Tricare have? Well, besides the fuel costs that retirees incur when they drive to the facilities. And there wouldn’t be any fuel price increases if we drilled our own resources.<\/p>\n

But these ideas [Tricare fee increases] will be raised again as Defense officials continue to argue that, unless fees increase, additional force cuts will be needed.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

So, basically, they’re just pitting retirees against the active duty force.<\/p>\n

So, how long are veterans supposed to be “giving” to the country, and especially the little ingrates who are working at the Pentagon who see no problem in raiding the money we put into our healthcare so they can deploy aircraft carriers. Don’t get me wrong, I want to see more aircraft carriers deployed to the Middle East, but not on the backs of veterans.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was surprised,\u201d [Rep. Joe Wilson (R-S.C.)] said in a phone interview. \u201cBecause the information we had been provided is that the reason for increasing the Tricare premiums, up to 365 percent \u2026 is ever increasing health care costs. As it turns out, there really is a downward spike in health care costs.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I’m surprised that no one noticed until now.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Yeah, about that whole not balancing the federal budget on the backs of veterans thing, Tricare … Tricare defends fee hikes in face of $708m surplus<\/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-31298","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\/31298","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=31298"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31298\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=31298"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=31298"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=31298"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}