It might not look like it on the surface, but that appears to be the plan.  Defense Secretary Gates, as part of his personal lame duck session, is hoping to raise costs for the Tri-Care insurance plan that many military retirees depend on.

Gates’ assistant Secretary of Defense for Health Affairs, Jonathan Woodson, has made statements before Congress indicating that rationing is definitely part of the plan.  As reported at [1] DailyPress.com Woodson 

“referred to more cost-efficient “therapies” and addressing “waste in the way we deliver care because of the culture of medicine. And there’s opportunity to decrease the variability of care that might result in cost savings.”

This doesn’t take much reading between the lines.  This is politi-speak for rationing and lowering the amounts paid to Doctors for their services.  Tri-Care’s payments for services are already laughably low, and “decreasing the variability of care” aka lowering payments, will likely drive many Doctors and clinics out of military retiree care.

Raising premium payments is also a likely method that DoD will use to “cut costs”.  Obviously this cuts costs for DoD, but raises the costs significantly for retirees.  Military retired pay increases by a cost of living adjustment only.  These cost of living adjustments are part of the Federal budget process and are not guaranteed.  No connection has been previously made between the reduction in other promised benefits and the calculated cost of living change used to help determine COLA raises for military retirees.  This means that military retirees will very likely have their retired pay effectively reduced by the amount of Tri-Care premium increases.

How much will these premiums increase?  We don’t know yet.  What we do know is that we have made promises to our military retirees regarding medical care and retirement pay.  These promises are being broken almost daily by the current Congress.  Gates points out that medical care as part of the Defense budget will be approximately $50 billion next year.  This is a huge amount of money, but Congress was willing to spend more than that to pay off teacher’s and other State-level public workers (unions) as an “emergency” spending bill.

Which is the greater emergency for the Federal government?  Saving the pay of State workers to whom no promise was made, or saving the promised benefits of those who put their lives on the line for this Country?

Seems like a pretty easy decision to me.