You do understand that Gates was the one pushing this back a couple of years ago?
Of course people like JD do not want to raise their payment on insurance. They want people like me to pay for their insurance for life!
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/29/us...care.html?_r=1
WASHINGTON —
Francis Brady enjoys a six-figure salary and generous benefits at the consulting firm Booz Allen Hamilton, but as a retired Marine lieutenant colonel he and his family remain on the military’s bountiful lifetime health insurance, Tricare, with fees of only $460 a year. He calls the benefit “phenomenal.”
It is so cheap compared to what Booz Allen has,” Colonel Brady said in a recent interview, acknowledging that premiums called for by private employers can run many times greater.
Of nearly 4.5 million military retirees and their families, about three-quarters are estimated to have access to health insurance through a civilian employer or group. But more than two million of them stay on Tricare. As the costs of private health care continue to climb, their numbers are only expected to grow.
Now, as part of a broad offensive to cut Pentagon spending, that group is once again in the sights of Defense Secretary
Robert M. Gates, who is seriously considering whether to ask for Tricare fee increases in next year’s budget — and perhaps start one of the last fights of his public career.