U.S. Military (Ret.): Squaring budget realities with health care promises - Military Retirement, leaving the service - Military Times

U.S. Military (Ret.): Squaring budget realities with health care promises

Retirees who follow the news are painfully aware that military retirement benefits, including health care, are in the spotlight as part of the broader debate over how to fix our nation’s financial crisis.

A flurry of articles and editorials in various newspapers has focused on the rising cost of these benefits.

Many retirees say, with some justification, that they were promised “free health care for life” when they signed up for the military and served full careers.

But as painful as it is to accept, that promise was made in a much different era — and the financial meltdown facing the nation makes the government’s ability to keep that promise increasingly tenuous.

Ironically, the Pentagon’s own planning failures have been a significant contributor to its soaring health care costs, which have hit $50 billion a year and continue to spiral upward.

When Tricare was created in 1995, the enrollment fee for Tricare Prime was set at $230 a year for an individual retiree and $460 a year for a family — a good deal even back then.

Because the Defense Department never built a mechanism into the program to allow for even modest annual fee increases, the deal has become even better for retirees over the years. Similarly, when Tricare for Life was created in 2001, it did not have any enrollment fees — and still doesn’t.

Today, Tricare is far less costly to beneficiaries than virtually any other health care plan in the nation. But the costs to the Defense Department — and U.S. taxpayers — continue to climb.

The effect of these rising costs has been masked somewhat in recent years, in part because the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have been driving up the overall defense budget. Now, with the wars winding down and Congress and the White House considering drastic budget cutbacks, hard choices are in the wind.

The first increases in enrollment fees for Tricare Prime took effect Oct. 1, rising $30 a year for individuals and $60 a year for families, to $260 and $520, respectively. And President Obama has just proposed the first enrollment fee for Tricare for Life — $200 a year.

Even with those increases, Tricare still ranks as one of the lowest-cost health plans in the nation. Is that a price we’re willing to pay to ensure what may well be the long-term viability of the entire retiree health care benefit?

Is any increase in health care fees a breach of faith? What changes would we — should we — be willing to accept in this vastly altered budget reality?

I’d like to hear your views. I’ll include excerpts from the most thoughtful responses in future columns.