Florida congressmen and veterans' groups on Tuesday blasted an Obama administration plan to double or triple Tricare medical premiums for active-duty and retired military personnel.
The sharply higher prices reportedly are designed to push service members and veterans out of the military's Tricare program and into Obamacare's insurance exchanges. The administration believes the move will cut Tricare costs by $1.8 billion in fiscal 2013 and $12.9 billion by 2017.
According to one congressional estimate, a retired Army colonel with a family currently paying $460 a year for health coverage would pay $2,048 under the new price schedule.
The plan would take effect after the 2012 elections.
"It is unconscionable, utterly disrespectful and obviously evidences the disdain the Obama administration has for our warriors, to whom he should apologize," said Rep. Allen West, R-Plantation.
West, a retired Army colonel, added that the Obama plan -- which does not raise the rates on unionized civilian employees in the Defense Department -- is larded with politics.
"President Obama believes health care should be free for his union cronies and entitlement-centered political base, but not for those exceptional men and women who serve or have served to keep us free," West complained.
Rep. Tom Rooney, a member of the House Armed Services Committee, also assailed the initiative.
I am deeply disturbed by President Obama's plan to drive Tricare premiums so high that military retirees are forced out of the health-care plans we promised them and into the new entitlement programs created by Obamacare," said Rooney, R-Tequesta.
"Asking our troops and military retirees to shoulder the burden of Washington's overspending is simply wrong, and I will strongly oppose any effort by the president to break our commitments to our veterans by pricing them out of the health-care benefits they earned and deserve."
The 2.1 million-member Veterans of Foreign Wars, vowing to fight the Obama plan, issued this statement:
A secure America needs a strong military, and whether one serves honorably for four years or 40, messing with military pay and benefits is a clear signal to the troops and their families that the budget is more important than people.
"That is going to seriously hurt recruiting and retention, and potentially end the all-volunteer force, because nobody wants to work for an ungrateful employer in a vocation as inherently dangerous as ours.
On top of the premium increases, veterans would also be hit with a new annual fee for a program called Tricare for Life. And some benefits will become means-tested," similar to social programs.
"This will be treating them like welfare instead of benefits for military service," said Bill Gertz, a national security affairs expert who broke the story on the Washington Free Beacon website.
John Hayward, a conservative commentator at Human Events, called the Obama plan "part of an overall strategy to dump as many Americans as possible into budget-blasting 'public exchanges,' which were already on course to cost at least $460 billion by 2019."
A Heritage Foundation study last year concluded that those costs could more than double if enough private-sector employers decide to wash their hands of Obamacare and shift their employees to the insurance exchanges.
"That study didnt anticipate a tidal wave of military veterans sliding into the deficit pit," Hayward noted.
The administration's proposed budget would slash overall Pentagon spending by $487 billion.
The anticipated Tricare savings of $12.9 billion over five years represent a tiny sliver of the military's budget. Indeed, Gertz noted, it's even less than the $20.5 billion Obama's Department of Energy expended on green energy grants and loans, "80 percent of which went to companies owned or tied to Mr. Obamas top fundraisers."
But for military personnel and veterans, the Tricare shuffle adds up to real money.
Obama's plan calls for increases between 30 percent and 78 percent in Tricare annual premiums for the first year. After that, the plan will impose five-year increases ranging from 94 percent to 345 percent -- more than three times current levels -- Gertz reported.
Retired Navy Capt. Kathryn M. Beasley, of the Military Officers Association of America, pledged a united front in fighting the proposed health-care increases, which would require congressional approval.
We think its absolutely wrong, she told the Free Beacon. This is a breach of faith."
Contact Kenric Ward at kward@sunshinestatenews.com or at (772) 801-5341.
