washington scene
MOAA certainly has no problem with protecting the VA’s budget for health care and other services. But this raises a serious new question: If health care services for veterans who served as little as two years deserve full protection, why is the administration proposing to impose a new $1,000 to $2,000 annual health care tax on those who served and sacrificed for multiple decades in uniform?
Spouse Career Fair a Hit
More than 300 spouses attend.
MOAA, in partnership with Blue Star Families, hosted its sixth annual Spouse Symposium, in San Diego Jan. 26. The symposium, “Keeping a Career on the Move,” drew more than 300 military spouses to the morning session, which included a dynamic employer panel discussing “Five Things Employers Want You to Know.” Representatives from several significant companies provided attendees an insider’s look at how employers see military spouse job seekers.
Monique Rizer, MOAA deputy director of spouse programs, rounded out the morning with an interactive workshop on “Finding Your Dependable Strengths.”
In the afternoon, approximately 500 military spouses and veterans attended a career fair featuring more than 50 local employers who were actively recruiting and hiring.
MOAA Benefits Information and Financial Education Director Capt. Bud Schneeweis, USCG-Ret., delivered a seminar on “The Dollars and ‘Sense’ of Working Outside the Home.”
MOAA Deputy Director of Government Relations Karen Golden hosted a “Capitol Hill Q&A” session. An interactive session offered spouses the opportunity to meet one-on-one with experts in the areas of health care, employment, education, and legislation.
Means Testing’s True Meaning
Tiering penalizes longer, successful careers.
The president’s FY 2013 budget proposes “tiering,” or means testing, military health care fees based on retired-pay levels, so retired E-6s and below would pay one rate, E-7s to O-4s would pay higher rates, and O-5s and above would pay the most.
The Pentagon offers this proposal as if basing health care fees on the retired-pay level is doing retirees a favor.
In fact, it’s an insidious attack on the very nature of service-earned benefits, and it’s uniquely discriminatory toward the military community.
No other federal health care beneficiary pays income-based premiums. The president, the speaker of the house, and the secretary of defense all pay the same premiums as the lowest-grade federal civilian.
Means testing health care fees also is rare in the private sector.
Why? Because it’s a benefit earned by service to an employer or, in the military’s case, to the country.
Means testing normally is applied to welfare programs, social insurance programs, and other unearned benefits provided as a government gift or “safety net” for those in need.
But military health care benefits most emphatically are not a gift, and MOAA believes these proposals represent inappropriate increases for all grades, regardless of retired-pay level.
36 MILITARY OFFICER APRIL 2012
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