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| Military Pay, Pensions, and Health Care or Weapons, Gates Warns |
| 2011-05-29 |
| This month Robert Gates, Barack Obama’s outgoing defence secretary, launched a review of Pentagon spending. He warned in a speech on May 24th that pay, pensions and health care would all need to be restructured, or they would crowd out the purchase of vital new weapons. Military benefits, from subsidised food and education to free college tuition, have traditionally been used to enhance the appeal of a job that involves, at the best of times, limited freedom and frequent moves and, at worst, being killed. But with the exception of the army during the worst years in Iraq, the armed forces consistently meet or exceed their targets for recruitment and retention. Indeed, Robert Hale, the Pentagon’s comptroller, says the department now has the opposite problem: with unemployment around 9%, fewer soldiers are quitting, pushing up costs. Some branches are moving to force people to leave. The real budget-buster is health care, which, Mr Gates says, is “eating the Defence Department alive.” Since 2000 its annual health-care bill has shot from $17 billion to $49 billion, and the Congressional Budget Office reckons it will reach $65 billion, or 11% of the defence budget, by 2015. Congress seems to be starting to get the message. Three times it ignored George Bush junior’s proposal to raise Tricare fees; this year, the Republican-controlled House of Representatives is on the verge of granting Mr Obama’s request for a (much more modest) 13% increase. The premium would then grow, though only with inflation rather than the higher health-care inflation rate Mr Obama had asked for. Even if the Senate agrees, the savings will be trivial, at less than $7 billion over five years. But it is a sign of the times that, for the first time in memory, military compensation is no longer untouchable. |
| Posted by:Anonymoose |
| #2 The premium would then grow, though only with inflation rather than the higher health-care inflation rate Mr Obama had asked for. And therein lies the stinger. When inflation explodes - and pretty much everyone I know believes it's when, not if - TRICARE or whatever they rename it will be affordable only to a handful. The costs will go down because the number of people who can afford it will shrink dramatically. Mike |
| Posted by: Mike Kozlowski 2011-05-29 23:01 |
| #1 The real budget-buster is health care, which, Mr Gates says, is "eating the Defence Department alive." Maybe because Congress has mandated but failed to properly fund the function. They knew the retiree costs were there but refused to allocate the monies necessary. Three times it ignored George Bush juniorÂ’s proposal to raise Tricare fees; this year, the Republican-controlled House of Representatives is on the verge of granting Mr ObamaÂ’s request for a (much more modest) 13% increase. Well, maybe because the original proposal around 2000 was to increase the cost three times the exiting charge. The friggin bureaucrats would rather say 'I told you so ten years later' rather than had increased the charge gradually and annually at five to seven percent and would have gotten a better chance at getting it done then. Ten years later that would have been a 50 to 70 percent increase, to help cover the costs. Yep, when we went in, we were told we'd get med coverage if we did the long tour. They reneged on that back in the 90s to cover the growing and largely unfunded expense then (it's what's going to come to roost in Medicare/Obamacare eventually anyway, but ignore the warning). Now the government could indeed afford to cover those 'grandfathered' retirees well within means if they kept support and services at the 70s and 80s (when the 'promises' were made) level of technology, pharmaceuticals, and protocols. However, since the retiree population wants 2010 level of care, that means we're all going to have to kick in some to cover the costs. |
| Posted by: Procopius2k 2011-05-29 22:25 |