Obama's Defense Cuts Include Raising Health Care Costs For Soldiers

Barack Obama has shown since taking office that he has the typical leftist attitude toward the military. Even as Commander in Chief he has shown a disdain that has become more obvious as he is using the military as a cost saving measure in his plans to increase spending in other ways in government. The total cut in military spending under the current Obama plan will be upwards of $1 trillion dollars over the next several years including forced retirement of many to cut the number of active duty military making our forces for the first time since WWII unable to handle a two theater battle situation.

It is well documented that 35% of our air power falls into these cuts as well as two full carrier task groups plus tens of thousands of civilian workers, but the most disgusting aspect other than the devastation that this will do to our defense capability is that he is cutting this on the backs of our soldiers not just in forced retirement but by dramatically increasing health care costs to retired and active duty military personnel.

According to Pentagon sources the military Tricare health program for active duty and retired personnel is taking a huge cut and forcing retired personnel approaching 65 and those over 65 to pay a massive increase in cost for their health plan through Tricare. This increase while hitting retirees harder is also targeting active duty personnel as well.

Fiscal year 2013 will cut Tricare by $1.3 billion with yearly cuts increasing to $12.9 billion by 2017. Part of this is also a manipulation by the Obama administration to force military personnel to opt out of Tricare in favor of Obamacare which will increase the number of dependents on Obama’s government health care system.

The plan calls for increases in premiums for Tricare by recipients of between 30% to 78% in fiscal 2013 with annual increases which will impose anywhere from a 94% to 345% increase over the next five years. According to congressional assessments, a retired Army Colonel with a family currently paying $460 a year for health care will pay $2,048. The new plan hits active duty personnel by increasing co-payments for pharmaceuticals and eliminating incentives for using generic drugs.

Adding insult to injury in this massive increase though Tricare for military personnel is that there is no requirement for increases for health care costs for the military civilian work force as well as any other federal civilian work force. Yet the active duty and retired military personnel who serve this Nation in defense of her with great sacrifice and in many cases their very lives are expected to carry the burden of increase health care costs in order to meet Obama’s gutting of the military.

Our men and women in uniform deserve better than this disgusting treatment at the hands of the usurper in chief who sits in the Oval Office and lectures Americans on how to live while he and his wife live an extravagant life style of expensive vacations and designer clothes while financially killing the brave men and women who make it possible for the CIC to live high on the hog as he and Michelle so blatantly and obviously do.

Ken Taylor

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