Earned by Service
Active duty, Guard, Reserve, and retired servicemembers have paid far more (in service and sacrifice) for their health care than any civilian employee ever has or ever will.
By Vice Adm. Norbert R. Ryan Jr., USN-Ret.

You already may know that DoD proposes to shift more health care costs to retirees by charging higher prescription fees, deductibles, and copayments starting October 2006. DoD justifies this based on private-sector trends, such as General Motors’ recent cutbacks to its retiree health benefits. But the military isn’t a troubled corporation. DoD is a different kind of employer, and military people are different kinds of employees, in ways that too many seem to forget.

Military service conditions are unlike any civilian’s working conditions. They include threats to life and limb, multiple extended family separations, frequent moves disrupting careers and schooling, and the forfeiture of freedoms most Americans take for granted — such as being able to say no to your boss or quit at any time without risk of incurring a felony conviction.

Rather than complaining, military people accumulate greater burdens of sacrifice over two or three decades — as a matter of duty and professionalism — to defend our country. In return for that extraordinary commitment to the nation, they should have a reasonable expectation their government will demonstrate a reciprocal commitment to provide a compensation and benefits package commensurate with their service and sacrifice. Unfortunately, the government’s commitment has fallen short of that standard.

A prime example is the dramatic (and permanent) escalation of deployment expectations imposed on Guard and Reserve members and their families. MOAA believes ardently that we can’t change expectations so severely without some accommodation to the reserve component benefit package — such as providing continuity of health care coverage.

Yet the administration has adamantly resisted this initiative. Congress nevertheless granted Guard and Reserve members limited health care coverage only last year — and DoD already has raised their premiums 8.5 percent (nearly triple their pay-raise percentage) just as the program is getting off the ground.
 
If a friend or neighbor or media editorial claims military health benefits are somehow excessive, please don’t let such disinformation pass unanswered. Congress established military retirement and health care benefits that exceed civilian benefits for a good reason — to at least partially offset the unique and extraordinary demands and sacrifices inherent in a military career that very few other Americans are willing to accept. The military is not General Motors.