Anne Flaherty
Associated Press
WASHINGTON — Defense Secretary Robert Gates is betting that Americans’ frustration with a ballooning deficit will finally allow him to trim one of the government’s most politically protected entitlement programs: the military’s $50 billion-a-year health care system.
The defense chief has tried to push similar proposals through Congress before and failed. And this year’s pitch is a particularly fraught with political risk. President Barack Obama is defending his own health care plan from threats of repeal in the House, while Republicans are looking for ways ahead of the 2012 election to discredit the administration’s commitment to the troops.
The military health care program, set up in the 1960s and known as TRICARE, has exploded in cost in recent years with some 10 million individuals now eligible for coverage, including active-duty personnel, retirees, reservists and their families. The price tag has climbed from $19 billion a year a decade ago to its current $50 billion.
Last month, Congress voted to extend coverage of children of service members and retirees until the age of 26, putting the program in line with new requirements for civilian policies.
Gates has been blunt about what he regards as the need to rein in the soaring costs of the program.
“Leaving aside the sacred obligation we have to America’s wounded warriors, health care costs are eating the Defense Department alive,” Gates said.
But cutting the U.S. defense budget is never a simple task, and Gates’ broader spending plans have already drawn fire from Congress.
“I remain committed to applying more fiscal responsibility and accountability to the Department of Defense, but I will not stand idly by and watch the White House gut defense when Americans are deployed in harm’s way,” Rep. Buck McKeon, R-Calif., the new chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, said of Gates’ broader proposal to cut $78 billion from the Pentagon budget over the next five years.
Gates’ proposal, announced this week, appears relatively modest. It would raise fees only on military retirees under the age of 65, who presumably have access to health care in their civilian jobs in addition to their military pensions and haven’t seen a rate increase in more than 15 years. Meanwhile, health care for active-duty troops would remain free and rates charged to older retirees would remain untouched.
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