washingtonscene
Job Killer for Military
W
Retirees Plan would make employers pay DoD.
e’ve seen a lot of counter- productive ideas over the years, but few have been so
half-baked as one offered by the presi- dent’s National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform. The commis- sion proposed making civilian employers reimburse the Pentagon for health care costs incurred by their retired military employees who use TRICARE. That’s wrong on so many levels it’s difficult to know even where to begin. • It would retroactively deny genera- tions of promises by military leaders and retention officers and NCOs that com- pleting a career in uniform would earn health care coverage in retirement. • It would deny the government’s own re- sponsibility for making good on its health care promises by shifting the cost to retir- ees and their prospective employers. • It says, in effect, military retirees who seek civilian employment didn’t earn squat and should be required to accept whatever health care benefits their new employers offer — no matter how much the employers might have cut it back. • It conveniently overlooks that the majority of military retirees must seek civilian employment to supplement their retired pay after being forced from ser- vice between the ages of 38 and 52, when their families’ education and other needs are the greatest. • Most egregious of all, it would lay an- other major career penalty on the group that least deserves it — those who al-
34 MILITARY OFFICER MARCH 2011
ready sacrificed their own interests for decades to serve the nation’s interests, including many who incurred significant disabilities in the process. That’s about as perverse a system as
MOAA can imagine. First, make service- members endure 10 years of the worst wartime sacrifices in generations. Then reward those extraordinary sacrifices by purposely impeding their chances for post-service employment in the worst job market in decades. It’s in vogue in the new Congress
to rail against “job-killing” programs. If you want to kill post-service job op- portunities for military retirees — and deter good people from serving military careers to boot — could there be a more creative way than making civilian em- ployers pay a stiff annual fine for every military retiree they hire?
New Dental D
Contract MetLife will replace United Concordia for TRICARE Dental.
oD has awarded the new TRI- CARE Dental Program contract to Metropolitan Life Insurance
Co. Inc. The contract provides world- wide coverage for enrolled family mem- bers of active duty personnel and for members of the Selected Reserve and In- dividual Ready Reserve and their eligible family members. Approximately 1.9 million beneficiaries
are enrolled in the premium-based TRI- CARE Dental Program worldwide. Dental care under the new contract will begin Feb. 1, 2012, following a 12- month transition period. New features of the TRICARE Dental Program contract include:
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