TriCare to be Cut to Encourage Enrollment in Obamacare.

[17D_guy]

Compare us to just GS and tell me we have "free" healthcare. There's a yearly fee for Tricare now. Are you saying retired folks should after retirement step into the world with a Dec, a atta boy and whatever they stashed in the TSP (which is relatively new)? Are you advocated a graduated system? All I can discern from your Patrick "Do you like Huey Lewis and the News" Bateman responses, is you're for nothing upon retirement. Correct?

Still waiting for that HR director/CEO to order me* to execute a deadly mission where kill/capture+torture is a real concern. Or the business that sends me away for a year, with meager stipends to cover the incurred cost during that time. Having known some folks who are civilian employeed and get moved like we do the DoD gets off cheap.

Where there is a business literally killing people/things and/or executing a national security/policy mission please let me know. I'll transfer over the TSP to a 401K, stop saluting the flag and throw on the walmart greeter vest as I route cyber bullets in their direction.

* By me, I mean you fliers/PJs mostly . Chance of me leading a convoy are slim to none. I can't even volunteer to deploy in current position.

[so.it.goes]

Why I will never understand the left, exhibit A:

Please don't make blanket statements like this... He may be from the left, but does not speak for everyone.

This is part of what is wrong with modern politics, in my mind. I am smart enough to know the difference between someone firmly implanted on the right and a "right-wing nut".

You can't lump everyone in the country into one of two categories...

Edited July 3, 2012 by so.it.goes

[hindsight2020]

For Joe1234 - you are correct from a business perspective drive by MBAs and HR personnel if you view benefits as being part of a compensation package. However, people who view the military as a business and want to operate it that IMO way are misguided. The military is not a business, people rarely choose to serve for 20 years because the benefits they get are so awesome that they stay regardless of the sacrifices they and their families make and after 20 years can sit in their recliner and enjoy the good life. Certainly tough choices must be made for the larger good of the country but trying to do it by cutting defense spending and balancing the budget on the backs of retirees is ridiculous. Our elected leadership talks in terms of billions when the deficit is trillions. Significantly increasing the cost of Tricare as an insurance with the argument "well this is what civilians pay for health care" is a slippery slope until it turns into no retirement benefits until your 65 (because your vested at some point.) Then see what the compensation/retainment argument does then.

I don't see it as that black and white. And I disagree with the above. I'd say I see a fuckin boatload of career enlisted Tech-to-Senior that fall in the category highlighted in bold. You dang skippy they do it for the pay and benefits. In the civilian world they'd be middle managers at the shoe department at macys making 35K FOR LIFE on a good year with no healthcare and a non-matching 401k. whats the compounding interest of contributing jack shit for 40 years again? The military has a very well established economic draft. Nowhere can you hop out of high school and make living wages for 15 out of 20 years for no formal education when compared to the millions of underemployed in this country. Honestly it's not the officers creating the pressure, it's the assload of enlisted SrA thru E-8 who intend on living a well-to-do Captain's lifestyle two new cars and three sick kids to a new house that causes the economic pressure. Again, strolling down to a more enlisted heavy branch like the Army, clues you into what demographic we're really fussing about. That's a lot of gimme gimme gimme for no meaningfully-educated workforce, if you were to put them all on the street at once.

This whole altruism in military service is greatly overstated. One stroll down to Kileen TX in that military city-state, and I realized we're running a different kind of welfare, that is all. It's a management question, like anything else involving labor. Ours has particular teeth when it comes to enforcing contracts, but it's otherwise no different. The argument of comparing it to real drafts is moot. Working at walmart or making a lot more for the hardship of being told how high to jump for 20 years is still a no-brainer to most with no options. I personally know these lifers; they didn't stick to the gig for a sense of altruism, they did it because thye'd be out on their ass doing something for a lot less money and benefits. Altruism's got dick to do with that. Otherwise, none of these benefits would be required to properly staff the machine. I don't have any fingers left after I count the number of people I know racing to get on 30+1day MPA before the wife pops, and these motherfuckers are living in 350K houses. Altruism.....LOL

Civilians are apathetic because they're underemployed. Granted there's a huge amount of dead weight in the civilian sector, but that's what our society is.

The "cut their welfare before mine" argument is noted, but it's hardly gospel. And I say this as a Reservist who has had the privilege of dealing with the "indignity" of justifying his existence to a duality of warring employers, both of whom would like nothing more to fire you for not being as committed to the other. If anything we're the true fokin heroes, taking a paycut to do the same job at the expense of my ability to barter for my civilian compensation and promotion against my civilian coworkers, all for the sake of altrusim right? Right. Go take BAH type II for your service to your country and then go talk about patriotism and sacrifice. AD cats would be all up in arms, just like they are when TMO shorts them 20 bucks on a mileage calculation, and these are officers for Christ Sake... Just a different shade o welfare is all....Too many REMFs and support folk in the peacetime military to make a convincing argument about the sacrifices of some of those downrange universally justifying said entitlements for all. But, as it stands, no way to stratify those differences in a practical enough way to be equitable. So soundbytes and generalizations is what you're left with.

To be fair, military retirement is akin to a really good law enforcement pension, so there are analogies out there. If civilian LE agencies can politically pull for the preservation of their benefits, more power to them.

Edited July 3, 2012 by hindsight2020

[Darth]

Hindsight2020 - Your point that E6-E7s stay to the end to make retirement is probably correct. However, how many walmart workers were killed on the job by being told "Stop that guy with the gun?" If, as you say, these folks stay because the alternatives are worse, so be it. They still earned those benefits (as miserably uneducated and with no other options as they are apparently.) My point is these benefits are earned and should not be viewed as a compensation/retention cost issue to be controlled in the same way as they are by a civilian organization.

[Prozac]

You can't lump everyone in the country into one of two categories...

Amen brotha.