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Health Care Happenings
■ Check out MOAA’s Health Care Happenings blog to stay updated on the latest news regard- ing military and VA health care issues. Visit
www.moaa.org/health carehappenings.
the next 24 hours. Those who project there will be no need for large forces delude themselves. Those who argue we’ll resort to a draft if that happens ignore the experi- ence of the past 10 years, when no serious consideration has been given to a draft despite the terrible mismatch between mili- tary requirements and force levels. Another lesson we should have learned is military readiness is dependent on our capacity to sustain a strong career force of top-quality personnel. Failing at that ren- ders the most advanced weaponry useless. A final lesson is military service is fun-
damentally different from civilian employ- ment, and a unique package of incentives is essential to induce top-quality people to serve for 20 to 30 years under conditions the majority of Americans are unwilling to endure even for one term of service. It’s not new for government leaders to
question whether such incentives are nec- essary. In 1986, Congress passed legislation that reduced retirement value by 20 percent for new entrants who would serve only 20 years, with progressively fewer penalties for those who served longer. But what they intended to be an incen-
tive to serve beyond 20 years proved a de- terrent to pursuing a service career at all, given other opportunities. And the law had to be repealed in the late 1990s when it was cited as a primary reason for growing ser- vice retention problems. Despite these experiences, and even
though sacrifices inherent in a military career are growing rather than diminish- ing, some government leaders are pursuing new (or recycled) initiatives to cut military retirement benefits more severely than the 1986 plan did; significantly increase health care fees for career personnel and families; curtail spending on military dependent schools, child care, and other programs; and freeze or curtail military pay raises. Their rationale cites personnel cost
growth since the late 1990s — without ac- knowledging that military people programs
4 0 MI L I T A R Y O F F I C E R O C TO B E R 2 0 1 0
grossly were underfunded at that time because of decades of cutbacks, and the subsequent increases were enacted to cor- rect retention and readiness problems and program inequities prevalent back then. They cite the growth of the retired
population as a budget problem — as if the government now should bear no responsi- bility for the predictable result of strenuous efforts by administrations and Congresses of both parties over the past 60 years to build and sustain large career forces. Most dismaying, the tacit thinking be-
hind all of these proposals is the service and sacrifices rendered by those in uniform aren’t worth what the government is paying them, and military people like their service conditions enough they’ll continue to put up with them despite a considerable dilu- tion of their career incentives. There is some attempt to obfuscate this
by asserting retirement changes would apply only to new entrants — the same flawed rationale employed in 1986. But the devaluation of military service is the same; it only defers the inevitable retention and readiness problems. MOAA understands the nation’s budget
challenges and acknowledges some adjust- ments in personnel programs are inevitable. But we believe any adjustments should
start from the basis of what military people should earn in return for decades of ex- traordinary sacrifice rather than imposing some arbitrary budget cut on these essential national readiness programs. MOAA asserts the only reason our nation
has been able to sustain the career force over the past decade is the compensation and benefits package that has been designed expressly to help offset the persistent, ad- verse conditions of military service. MO
— Contributors are Col. Steve Strobridge, USAF- Ret., direc tor; Col. Mike Hayden, USAF-Ret.; Col. Bob Norton, USA-Ret.; Cmdr. René Campos, USN- Ret.; Capt. Kathy Beasley, USN-Ret.; Col. Phil Odom, USAF-Ret.; Kelly Cotton; Bret Shea; and Matt Mur- phy, MOAA’s Government Relations Department.
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