washington scene
Zombies After Your Health Care
Unmindful attacks persist.
What is it about zombies that seems to fascinate a certain segment of the population? Pick up a book or a newspaper, turn on your TV, or go to a movie, and you’re likely to see stories or previews featuring zombies on the attack. There’s even a new movie about zombies in love.
It used to be sharks (“Jaws”) and dinosaurs (“Jurassic Park”). Now it’s zombies.
Why do they give us the shivers? Because they’re after us, and there’s just no reasoning with them.
They’re 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.
Well, MOAA looked at the data, and the results are (or should be) zombie-killers. The critics love to use 2001 as a starting point for health care cost comparisons because health care costs had been depressed seriously before that date by kicking Medicare-eligible military beneficiaries out of DoD health care programs.
After Congress fixed that inequity by enacting TRICARE For Life (TFL) in October 2001, DoD health care costs jumped over the next two years as older beneficiaries phased back into TFL.
At the time, everyone in Congress and the Pentagon acknowledged it was the right thing to do. But in recent years, critics have misrepresented that 10-year-old change to make bogus claims that costs are growing out of control.
32 MILITARY OFFICER APRIL 2013
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