Uproar Mounts Over Health Care Fee Proposal

Last week, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Peter Pace, and Army Chief of Staff Gen. Peter Schoomaker, testified again on the Hill, advocating increases in Tricare fees for retirees under age 65. The services senior enlisted leaders gave mirror testimony. In response, Air Force Sergeants Association Executive Director Richard Dean said: “We as a nation should not unfairly ask those who so greatly sacrificed for 20 years or longer in efforts to provide America’s freedoms, to continue to sacrifice until the grave.” The Military Officers Association of America said it “rejects Pentagon leaders’ disingenuous double-talk about exorbitant fee increases being ‘necessary to sustain the current benefit.'” MOAA called it “unconscionable to put the Joint Chiefs and senior enlisted advisors in the position of having to advocate a benefit cut in order to fund weapons programs.”