The Promise

[Eagle43]

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/14/bu...8fAuP9nau4Q1vg

An article in NY Times this a.m. indicates the Administration is worrying about the cost of military healthcare. So, let's see: They entice you to sign up; promise free healthcare (which is gone already), and now they wanna reduce TRICARE, cause it costs too much. To even discuss this during a war is revolting. Article says it's political suicide to try to alter it; I hope so. That would make GWB and his boys so hypocritical and unbelievable. Going around to military bases, making speeches, and then taking away stuff to feed the corporations. Hmm, is that like social security?

Here's a little of the article:

Tricare for Life is one of a long list of assurances, like prescription drug benefits for the elderly, that Washington is making to American citizens at a rate of more than $1 trillion a month. The government's unpaid-for promises grew by more than $13 trillion last year, a sum larger than the nation's 2004 economic output, and they now surpass $43 trillion, said David A. Walker, comptroller general of the United States.

Last year "was arguably the worst year in our fiscal history," said Mr. Walker, who runs the Government Accountability Office, the budget watchdog of Congress. "It seems clear that the nation's current fiscal path is unsustainable."

Washington, instead of making painful choices, is paving that path with borrowed money and hundreds of billions of dollars of deficit spending.

Tricare, the overall military health plan, has nearly nine million beneficiaries. Its only cost to participants is an annual fee, no higher than $460 a year, covering all veterans and their families. Tricare for Life, which supplements Medicare, is free. It covers military retirees over 65, their spouses and, in some cases, their former spouses, for as long as any of them live.

The number of military retirees is rising very slowly, toward 1.8 million by decade's end, because many veterans of World War II and Korea are dying. But Tricare for Life payments by the Pentagon will more than double, to $13 billion a year in 2015, from $6 billion last year. The money comes directly out of the Pentagon's budget for active-duty soldiers.

Tricare for Life is the biggest part of a package of benefits for military retirees and their families that has been passed by Congress since 2000 and that will cost $150 billion from now until 2015.

"It's costing mightily and it's in competition with some of the weapons systems," Senator Warner said.

But he said that having a first-class health plan for retirees was a crucial selling point for recruiting and retaining soldiers. "There's no sense in buying modern weapons," he said, "unless you've got healthy, intelligent people who can operate them and are willing to stay there."

The cost of military health care is now bigger than the Army's budget for buying new weapons, the Navy's budget for new ships and submarines, or the Air Force's budget for new planes. "The benefits we've added over the last six years now exceed the services' entire aircraft and ammunition procurement budgets," said Representative Duncan L. Hunter of California, the Republican chairman of the House Armed Services Committee.

Pentagon officials are warning Congress that something has to give.

The cost of military health care is "the single most daunting thing that we deal with out there today," said Gen. John P. Jumper, the Air Force chief of staff. "The price of Tricare, what it's costing us to sustain that, is going up and up."

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld is "very concerned with the growth" of new benefits and entitlements "that accrue principally to those who've left service, especially the retired community," said David S. C. Chu, the under secretary of defense for personnel. "The nation adopted them for good reason, but they are causing a significant cost issue for future defense budgets."

The House Armed Services Committee has tried to take Tricare for Life out of the Pentagon's budget and lay it at the Treasury's doorstep. The Treasury refused.

Tricare for Life was enacted after veterans' groups fought for a decade to fulfill a pledge made to generations of raw recruits. As health care costs soared in the 1990's, military retirees over 65 rebelled when forced out of the military health care plan and into less-generous Medicare coverage. They reminded Congress that military recruiters had told enlistees for decades that their medical needs would be covered for life.

The issue became known simply as "the promise." The veterans' groups waged an intense, emotional and ultimately successful campaign.
Tricare for Life is "a national obligation," said Steve Strobridge, director of government relations for the Military Officers Association of America, which represents 370,000 dues-paying members. "If the military is going to entice people to serve for decades and go to war, that carries with it certain obligations that must be fulfilled."

They have been hypocrites for years. They have screwed Veterans since day 1.

What perplexes me is that the GOP has talked about 'Government Waste' for the last 30 years to get elected to office. Now that we have a GOP President, GOP Congress and GOP supreme court, where all the proposals to eliminate this "government waste"?

I guess the waste they were talking about is Medical Care for Military Personal and Social Security.

[farmerEd]

>>What perplexes me is that the GOP has talked about 'Government Waste' for the last 30 years to get elected to office. Now that we have a GOP President, GOP Congress and GOP supreme court, where all the proposals to eliminate this "government waste"?

If you ask any hard-core conservatives, its because they don't yet have a "super-majority" in the house and senate...that will be the next campaign slogan, "I know things suck under the republicans, but give us a super-majority and then see how much we can accomplish"....if they get the super-majority, and things still get worse, they can just blame Clinton.


The blatant hypocrisy you mention above, should be no suprise...look at the self-described "ultra-conservatives" on this site...who describe themselves as fiscal conservatives, rugged individualists, self-made etc etc, and yet see nothing wrong with milking the government out of everything they can get....and then simultaneously complain that the govt spends to much money....republicans don't want to spend less money, they just want to spend less money on everyone else.

[Nords]

NYT really seems to be on a military-healthcare jihad.

Gee, personnel costs are higher than weapons systems? After decades of scaring the Russians & Chinese with stories of how highly trained we are? I wouldn't change the personnel costs even if RoboCruiser is the ship of the future.

One of the reasons that healthcare costs are rising is that life insurance payments are dropping. You're much more likely to survive combat injuries than ever before, although the recovery (with physical therapy & prostheses) will be horribly expensive. We've learned a lot about enhancing immune systems, minimizing blood loss, and protecting torsos & heads at the expense of the limbs. So I wonder what portion of Tricare's expense jump is coming from medically-retired veterans.

I think those scary health-care projections are looking at the Korea & Vietnam veterans, not the DESERT STORM drawdown. Not all of the boomer veterans will bankrupt the budget.

I think this article is groping toward a lesson that's been learned many times, Santayana's warning notwithstanding-- foreign aid is always cheaper than war.

[cute fuzzy bunny]

I think we've hit upon my key concern with the current administration.

These republicans arent conservatives.

Considering that some of the fundamental planks of the conservative platform are staying out of other countries business, reducing the size of government, and keeping the government out of the peoples business...

But they're doing good on reduction of wasteful social programs and supporting business interests.

Well...at least they're doing good at supporting business interests...

[Nords]

I think we've hit upon my key concern with the current administration.

These republicans arent conservatives.

Geez, imagine if the Democrats were liberals!

[cute fuzzy bunny]

That'd really be something, wouldnt it

[unclemick]

Let's see.

As a life long Democrat - in the 60's, I was for deficit spending.

Now I'm against it.

Er - I think. Or at least pretty sure!

Heh, heh, heh.

[cute fuzzy bunny]

Whats that old saying? If you arent a liberal in your youth you have no heart; if you arent a conservative in your old age, you have no brains?

[unclemick]

Hmmm

I thought it was a liberal who has been mugged or a conservative who has been arrested or something like that.

Boomers being the demographic 800 lb gorilla - all these issues will be with us for a while.

Psst - fricking Spotted Owls on a certain piece of Oregon timberland.

Heh, heh, heh.

[uncledrz]

I think this article is groping toward a lesson that's been learned many times, Santayana's warning notwithstanding-- foreign aid is always cheaper than war.

In oh so many ways!!