Capt Hank
04-16-2005, 20:58
** TRICARE For Life Under Fire.
An April 14 New York Times article headlined, "A New Call To Arms: Military Health Care" (http://www.moaa.org/Legislative/41405NYT.asp) makes the case that the growing cost of TRICARE For Life (TFL) will create growing pressures on the defense budget in the "people vs. things" cost debate.
The article quotes Defense Department leaders and certain others in and out of government as claiming that the rising cost of health care could crowd out other defense needs.
But it also quotes Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John Warner (R-VA) and MOAA Government Relations Director Steve Strobridge, USAF (Ret.) making the other side of the case - that the defense budget will have to be increased to meet government obligations for both hardware and personnel obligations - including TRICARE For Life.
We'll say again what we've said before: If the Administration will submit a budget to Congress requesting funds to cover both needs, Congress will fund them. The Chairmen of both the Senate and House Armed Services Committees have called for larger defense budgets. If the Office of Management and Budget or the Defense Department is requiring tradeoffs of any other defense needs to meet military health care costs, that's not right, it's not the intent of Congress, and it's certainly not military members' or retirees' doing.
TRICARE For Life was authorized less than five years ago because Congress recognized that military retirees had earned and deserved Medicare-supplement coverage that previously had been denied to them.
Rising health care costs are not unique to the military; that's a continuing issue for the entire country. But the United States government should be a model employer, not a backsliding one, especially when it comes to those who spent decades of service and sacrifice defending America through multiple hot and cold wars.
This debate's not going to go away, but MOAA won't back off from that basic truth. Those who contend that there's no readiness return on spending money to treat retirees and survivors fairly have disturbingly short memories. It wasn't that long ago that the Joint Chiefs of Staff were urging Congress to fix retiree health inequities, because they were having an effect on active duty retention
An April 14 New York Times article headlined, "A New Call To Arms: Military Health Care" (http://www.moaa.org/Legislative/41405NYT.asp) makes the case that the growing cost of TRICARE For Life (TFL) will create growing pressures on the defense budget in the "people vs. things" cost debate.
The article quotes Defense Department leaders and certain others in and out of government as claiming that the rising cost of health care could crowd out other defense needs.
But it also quotes Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John Warner (R-VA) and MOAA Government Relations Director Steve Strobridge, USAF (Ret.) making the other side of the case - that the defense budget will have to be increased to meet government obligations for both hardware and personnel obligations - including TRICARE For Life.
We'll say again what we've said before: If the Administration will submit a budget to Congress requesting funds to cover both needs, Congress will fund them. The Chairmen of both the Senate and House Armed Services Committees have called for larger defense budgets. If the Office of Management and Budget or the Defense Department is requiring tradeoffs of any other defense needs to meet military health care costs, that's not right, it's not the intent of Congress, and it's certainly not military members' or retirees' doing.
TRICARE For Life was authorized less than five years ago because Congress recognized that military retirees had earned and deserved Medicare-supplement coverage that previously had been denied to them.
Rising health care costs are not unique to the military; that's a continuing issue for the entire country. But the United States government should be a model employer, not a backsliding one, especially when it comes to those who spent decades of service and sacrifice defending America through multiple hot and cold wars.
This debate's not going to go away, but MOAA won't back off from that basic truth. Those who contend that there's no readiness return on spending money to treat retirees and survivors fairly have disturbingly short memories. It wasn't that long ago that the Joint Chiefs of Staff were urging Congress to fix retiree health inequities, because they were having an effect on active duty retention