Another Neocon Shell Game

The Bush administration wants military retirees to pay more for health care. This idea has been rejected before. So why bring it up again? It's part of the shell game that the neocon's play.

The idea is to steer military retiree's away from TRICARE (military healthcare) and toward health plans their current employers sponser. That would take the burden off the Pentagon.

At the same time, state and local gornernments, as well as private employer's, are asking these same individuals to use TRICARE so as to avoid having to pay insurance premiums for them. Sound like a kind of shell game to you?

The Chairman of the House Armed Services military personnel subcommittee, questions the projections given by the Pentagon of a $14.8 billion savings over five years. He says their projections assume that all of those retiree's will move to the private employer's insurance during that five year plan. Of course, like all of the other projections made by this Administration, one needs to be highly skeptical at best.

Senator Lindsey Graham, R-South Carolina, that great humanitarian, has said that he'd be willing to pay a little more once he retires from the Air Force Reserves. Well just fuckin goody for you Senator. A retired officer's pension, plus a Senator's pension, you should just about be able to make it you goddamn idiot. It isn't about the officer corps asshat. It's about the enlisted members who do the real work in the military and suffer the greatest loss for the the least pay and are continually shit on by dick's like you.

For Graham to say to Rumsfeld that "You're having to choose beween health care premiums, guns, bullets, airplanes and ships" is absolutely ridiculous. Not that that would stop him from saying it. Maybe get the fuck out of Iraq? How about a few dollars savings there?

So what are we talking about in dollars? The current amount payed for health care for a family, under TRICARE is $460. Under the new plan, depending upon rank at the time of retirement, it would jump to between $650 and $1,400.

Again, it is not about the officer corps. It is about retired E-6's who are working as taxi driver's and just trying to make it from month to month. This is another example of Supporting the Troops folks.

It's 2006. Time for this country to correct it's downward spiral. And stop playing these shell games.