Norman Campbell e-mail on TriCare For Life

Since 01-28-06

From: MRGRG-MS@yahoogroups.com [mailto:MRGRG-MS@yahoogroups.com]On Behalf Of Floyd Sears
Sent: Friday, January 27, 2006 12:56 PM
To: !CAG/MRGRG e-mail network
Subject: [MRGRG-MS] [Fwd: TFL Funding]

MRGRG-MS Main Page http://groups.yahoo.com/group/MRGRG-MS

I highly recommend that you read the following Norman Campbell e-mail. Then I highly recommend that you explain it to your 2 Senators and your Representative. If you do not understand Norman's e-mail then communicate directly with him at cfcgunnrb29@comcast.net . Folks, this is important. Either you take part or DoD is going to take you apart.

Floyd

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: TFL Funding
Date:     Fri, 27 Jan 2006 07:24:00 -0700
From:     Norman Campbell <cfcgunnrb29@comcast.net>

FUNDING TRICARE FOR LIFE

Research reveals contradictions to common sense, slight of hand accounting practices, and a “tail wag dog” policy as the Executive Branch fails to recognize the intent of Congress, with the cooperation of the Congress itself. In the leadership in this administration and in the Republican controlled Congress there is a concerted effort on-going to cut military retiree benefits by either eliminating them or increasing their costs to the users to such an extent that the earned benefit is worthless.  

As a percentage of GNP, the defense budget is at or near an all time low – and this with a War going on. Funding for military healthcare is available if DOD asks for it and the Administration stops its misguided attempt to equate military career benefits with those offered in civilian careers. The Administration, DOD, Congress and the American people need to understand that freedom is not free – it costs money to keep young men and women on active duty for 20 or more years expecting and demanding of them to lay down their lives if necessary at any minute, be available to work continually 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, and do so under adverse, dangerous conditions. You just don’t throw people like this into nothing but a Social Security/Medicare retirement system that appears to be the present goal of the government.  

In 1995, military retirees and their dependents, over the age of 65 were denied military related healthcare programs provided by the government.  As hundreds of thousands of elderly retirees were dumped into Medicare, and forced to purchase costly supplemental insurance, DOD budgets for military healthcare plunged to all time lows. Today, DOD uses 1995 military retiree healthcare costs, without explanation, as a baseline to compare existing and projected retiree healthcare costs, giving a dramatic indication (although fundamentally skewed) of the increase in healthcare costs. 

In 2001 Congress enacted TRICARE for Life (TFL) and directed the establishment of a TFL Trust Fund that required two kinds of deposits into the fund. One of the deposits comes from the Treasury and is called an unfunded liability. It is this fund that covers those of us already retired and on TFL. The second deposit into the TFL Fund comes from DOD and is meant to help build the fund to cover healthcare costs for today’s active duty forces, who serve until retirement, their families and survivors once they become eligible for Medicare 20 to 45 years in the future.  Initially, DOD complained about the 8 to 9 billion dollars this would cost each year and the administration would not allow the DOD budget to be increased to accommodate this cost. Service organizations became involved in asking Congress to shift responsibility for both trust fund deposits to the Treasury and Congress changed the law to do just that! This now meant that DOD, by law, was out of the TFL funding business.

But wait, the Office of Management and Budgets (OMB), part of the Executive Branch, got the House and Senate Budget Committees to agree that the deposits had to come out of the DOD budget. In other words, the Executive Branch convinced the Legislative Branch to break the law that they just enacted.  Because the Budget Committees, who are the enforcers of the law, are now in agreement with each other, nothing can be done about it. Of course the Republican controlled Congress is not going to force this issue which might embarrass the Republican controlled Executive Branch.  DOD must make their yearly deposit into the TFL Fund and are still not allowed by the Administration to increase the Defense Budget to cover this deposit.  All of this, with a Congress more than willing to release funds from the Treasury to cover DOD’s payment into the TFL Fund.

This then, is the disingenuous basis being used to accuse military retirees of taking funds from the active duty forces and defense programs. It is being used as one of the reason behind DOD’s push to increase user costs of the TRICARE programs and Senior Pharmacy Program.  It is in fact a dishonest method of forcing those who have given so much already to fund DOD through “taxation” of what they rightfully were promised and earned.  TFL is next!!!!

It is hard to believe the conclusions that can be drawn from this. One is; we have a Government that is more than willing to recruit young men and women with false promises, send them into harms way, then withhold the tools they need to protect themselves because the funds to purchase these tools are being spent keeping the promises the government originally made. There is not one leader with enough guts to point out that the funds are available to cover both guns and healthcare, and insist that this foolishness of not allowing DOD to ask for them cease immediately. In the end, just as the government intends, it is the military retiree who loses – big time.

Just remember;  the money that pays for TFL for those of us over age 65 comes from the Treasury –  no matter how much DOD (Rumsfeld,  Drs. Chu and Winkenwerder ) want to make Congress and the American people believe that we, the present day military retirees, are taking funds needed to support the active duty forces.

Norm Campbell
ne obliviscaris - (never forget)