[The following excerpts were taken from the Military Officers Association of America’s editorial titled, ‘As I See it: Zombies Are After Your Health Care.' By Col. Steven Strobridge, USAF Retired]
[Zombies] are relentless. They’re mindless. They have no feelings. They don’t care about anything — except coming after you. And now they’re attacking your health care.
Who are these zombies? They’re the ones who keep claiming “military health care costs are exploding out of control,” cite bogus stats about “cost growth since 2001,” and refuse to look at the actual data.
Since the introduction of TRICARE for Life in 2002-03, the rate of growth in military health costs has declined pretty steadily. In fact, DoD has taken advantage of that by reallocating almost $3 billion in unused health care funding to other DoD programs over the past three years.
[Click here to view the data and more complete explanation]
For FY 2012, DoD health costs grew only about 0.4 percent compared to FY 2011.
And the rate will dampen further in coming years, as a result of:
- pharmacy copay increases taking effect this year;
- requirements for Medicare-eligible retirees to try mail-order or military pharmacies to refill maintenance medications for at least a year; and
- the recently announced phase-out of TRICARE Prime for retirees who don’t live near military medical facilities.
We’re [MOAA] under no illusions that the unreasoning zombies pressing attacks on your health care will care about these facts — or anything else besides coming after you.
But you should.
Visit the Military Officers Association of America to read the full article and learn how you can help fight the zombie attack.
