Romney is wrong to claim that President Obama plans cuts to health care for military retirees

[white cloud]

In an effort to mislead Americans about President Obama’s proposal for the TRICARE program for military retirees, Mitt Romney falsely accused the President of slashing benefits for military retirees. “He’s going after TRICARE,” Romney said. “Saying, ‘Ok, we’re going to raise the co-pays. We’re going to cut the benefits.’ Why is it we go after military families?”
http://www.attackwatch.com/romney-is-wrong-to-claim-that-president-obama-plans-cuts-to-health-care-for

[kcks]

1. There

was some talk about doint that several weeks I do not recall where I saw that, I think it has been pulled back or at least hidden for now.

[woo me with science]

2. It's not false. It's true that costs for Tricare will rise significantly

under the President's plan. Romney's plan would be even more devastating, so the charge is extremely hypocritical coming from him, but please do not minimize what the President is doing to retirees. When we are pouring millions into developing heat rays and going into new countries, there is no excuse targeting benefits like these to people who gave their entire careers to the service and uprooted their families every two years to do so.

People on Tricare would see increases of $1,500 a year or more starting in 2013 under the new budget plan proposed by the Obama administration.

This includes new enrollment fees/yearly fees, higher deductibles, and significantly higher prescription costs, with continued rises scheduled for the future.

Details of changes here:

http://www.navytimes.com/news/2012/02/military-tricare-costs-would-jump-in-budget-plan-022312w/

Military advocacy groups said they understand the budget constraints facing DoD but feel this proposal “passes the buck” to beneficiaries.

“We take issue with the Pentagon’s decision to raise fees for beneficiaries, relying on them to pay for the budget when it’s the department’s responsibility to increase efficiencies and cut their own costs,” said Kathy Beasley, health care committee co-chairwoman for the Military Coalition, an umbrella group of more than 30 national military associations.

The groups also are concerned about the Pentagon’s call to link fee hikes to retirement income and index future increases to the medical inflation rate, which tends to rise faster than overall inflation or the annual cost-of-living adjustment in military retired pay....When lawmakers last year approved the first fee increases since Tricare was created in the mid-1990s, they limited future hikes to the retiree COLA. The most recent COLA increase was 3.6 percent; medical inflation typically rises by 6 percent or 7 percent a year.

“These new increases, coming on top of last year’s changes, are a classic ‘bait and switch’ that would raise beneficiary fees by as much as $1,500 a year or more,” said retired Vice Adm. Norb Ryan, president of the Military Officers Association of America.

Link to full White House proposal:
http://docs.google.com/viewer?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.whitehouse.gov%2Fsites%2Fdefault%2Ffiles%2Fomb%2Fbudget%2Ffy2012%2Fassets%2Fjointcommitteereport.pdf