TriCare in Danger
I am forwarding this because all of you are military retirees, some of us are already drawing the Tricare for Life because of age.......the others are on
their way to being able to do so............read this carefully, all the way to the bottom, go to the OMB page and read all the way through the proposal. I,
for one, am going to bombard all my congressional folks with emails. I think you will probably want to do the same thing. If so, please forward to all your
retiree contacts - time to raise hell!
I don't know how many of you partake of the TriCare for Life program but here is a very interesting note on the subject. Seems as though our President Elect has placed a priority on cutting it out of the budget as a means to provide funding for those things he promised during the campaign. In any case, on page 189 of the Congressional Budget Office report, see the note below on how to get to that spot, there is a strong recommendation to eventually eliminate the program as it is too expensive. I would ask that you contact your elected officials and register your strong opposition to the elimination of this program. Just another move to slight those of us who dedicated much of our adult lives to the defense of our country. Thanks for listening.
heads-up from BG Bob Clements, USAF Ret (P38 Bob)
The following has been added to the Congressional Budget Office Web Site (www.cbo.gov): a. Budget, Options,
Volume 1: Health Care (http://www.cbo.gov/doc.cfm?index=9925)
For those who have never opened one of these web sites from OMB :
1. double click on the above URL
2. click on PDF
3. click on the binoculars
4. do a search for TFL
5. read what the OMB wonks have in mind to save a few bucks on our backs
"Now here it is folks and I will guarantee if you sit around on your behind and do nothing about it as they bring these options forward this coming
year, you will lose one of the best healthcare benefits that the Medicare eligible retired military have. It is short of the promises made that we fought so
hard for back in the late 90s and early 2000s but it is still the best healthcare program that anyone in the United States has, bar none.
People who are professionals always look for the channel of least resistance when it comes to cutting money out of the Federal and DOD budget. I can tell you
this straight on, military retirees are one of those channels of least resistance noted for sitting around, doing nothing, and waiting for ole Joe to do it
for them. You had better wake up. Your medical benefits are prime target. If you lose them, you have nobody to blame but yourself. Let me repeat that ... you
have nobody to blame but yourself.
The way to secure your benefits is to write to your members of Congress and to keep writing and writing and writing. ONCE IS NOT ENOUGH!! Keep repeating the
above statement until you are blue in the face.
Now I'm going to make one more statement to all of you younger people out there who are not yet eligible for Tricare for Life. HEALTH CARE WILL
EVENTUALLY BECOME THE DOMINATING FACTOR IN YOUR LIFE. Remeber that . . . . it will impact you big time with the utmost in cruelty unless you are fortunate
enough to die from a heart attack . . . or get run over by a truck.
Now, I am going to attach AGAIN exactly what OMB has in store for military retirees using TFL. This source is directly from OMB and is not something that I
have dreamed up. They are telling you exactly what they are going to do with your benefits. If you do nothing, this is what you will get.
The service organizations will put up a fight and are aware of this and will put up a fight but, they will need your help and can't do it by themselves.
I hope this makes it clear as to what you can expect if you do nothing.
To show you how stupid these professionals can be at times if you will read the attached document closely you will see that in spite of the MTFs (Military
Treatment Facility) need to get patients back to keep their doctors busy and the hospitals from going to clinic status, these people from OMB would employ a
means to keep retirees from using MTF facilities by charging them a fee for services. How dumb can you get.
Even if you are an Obama lover, and believe that changeth cometh, TFL option from OMB will not go away. They need the money they spend on you for other
programs for people who produce nothing but votes to keep their boss in office. chk6 .. bob"
A footnote: BG Bob Clement is known with affection as"P38bob". He flew P38s in WWII. He was one of the stalwart warriors that led effectively from
the front when the hard battles were being fought to bring Tricare for Life to reality. I was honored and pleased to a player in that effort by following P38
Bob's lead. (in those days I was known as MilVet99)
MilVets: it looks like we will again be confronted by the 'attack of the beancounters' who, by and large, wouldn't know (and probably never will
know)genuine unselfish service to our country and are solely motivated by crunching numbers so that those numbers will reflect favorably on their bosses and
their boss's causes. They have no thought to the havoc they would cause . . . in many cases the loss of any amount of TFL benefits would be a an
insurmountable hardship ..... and to some it would truly be a death sentence.
