Wow, check out this comment on existing U.S. single-payer system

[woo me with science]

9. The administration has authored unconscionable changes to Tricare.

People on Tricare will see increases of $1,500 a year or more under the new budget plan proposed by the Obama administration.

This includes new enrollment fees/yearly fees, higher deductibles, and significantly higher prescription costs, with continued rises scheduled for the future.

Note: The plan specifically talks of putting costs more on a par with those of private insurance. This for people who signed up to serve in the military and have their families uprooted every year or two over decades and family members split apart and sent to dangerous locations....with the promise that free health care would be part of the compensation for that service.

Details of changes here:

http://www.navytimes.com/news/2012/02/military-tricare-costs-would-jump-in-budget-plan-022312w/

Military advocacy groups said they understand the budget constraints facing DoD but feel this proposal “passes the buck” to beneficiaries.

“We take issue with the Pentagon’s decision to raise fees for beneficiaries, relying on them to pay for the budget when it’s the department’s responsibility to increase efficiencies and cut their own costs,” said Kathy Beasley, health care committee co-chairwoman for the Military Coalition, an umbrella group of more than 30 national military associations.

The groups also are concerned about the Pentagon’s call to link fee hikes to retirement income and index future increases to the medical inflation rate, which tends to rise faster than overall inflation or the annual cost-of-living adjustment in military retired pay....When lawmakers last year approved the first fee increases since Tricare was created in the mid-1990s, they limited future hikes to the retiree COLA. The most recent COLA increase was 3.6 percent; medical inflation typically rises by 6 percent or 7 percent a year.

“These new increases, coming on top of last year’s changes, are a classic ‘bait and switch’ that would raise beneficiary fees by as much as $1,500 a year or more,” said retired Vice Adm. Norb Ryan, president of the Military Officers Association of America.



Link to full White House proposal:
https://docs.google.com/viewer?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.whitehouse.gov%2Fsites%2Fdefault%2Ffiles%2Fomb%2Fbudget%2Ffy2012%2Fassets%2Fjointcommitteereport.pdf