Raising TRICARE fees and Cutting Veterans Benefits to Slash Deficit
Retiree receiving medical attention at David Grant USAF Medical Center. Photo by Bennie J. Davis III.
The good idea fairies have been working overtime at the Congressional Budget Office. After the “whacking” of wands across analysts’ heads, the CBO released their latest suggestions on what should be cut or reduced in order to help reduce the budget deficit over the next 10 years.
One of their recommendations is to reduce BAH to 80% of average housing costs. Another involves reducing funding for ship construction. They’re recommending raising the social security retirement eligibility age, and reducing disability compensation for those who are eligible for social security benefits.
From Military.com:
The CBO suggested that increasing Tricare enrollment fees for working-age retirees — those under age 65 — could help slash the deficit by $12.6 billion. To obtain this, it said, the Defense Department should more than double annual enrollment fees for individuals and families enrolled in Tricare Prime and institute annual fees of $485 for an individual and $970 for a family for Tricare Select. Most working-age retirees currently pay no enrollment fees for Tricare Select.
The CBO also suggested instituting enrollment fees for Tricare for Life, the program that serves as supplemental coverage for military retirees on Medicare. Analysts estimated that the Defense Department could save $12 billion between 2021 and 2028 if it adopted annual enrollment fees of $485 for an individual or $970 for a family for Tricare for Life, in addition to the Medicare premiums most military retirees 65 and older pay.
With retiree cost share going up, they’d look for other options in the commercial market. The CBO argues that this should reduce the government’s cost share.
Veterans aren’t off the hook either. CBO suggested removing some disability compensation eligibility in order to save money for the government. Rated 30% or less? The CBO doesn’t think you should be getting your compensation.
More from military.com:
Narrowing eligibility for disability compensation for seven diseases the Government Accountability Office has said are not caused or aggravated by military service, including arteriosclerotic heart disease, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, Crohn’s disease, hemorrhoids, multiple sclerosis, osteoarthritis, and uterine fibroids. This option would save $33 billion over 10 years.
Ending the VA’s individual unemployability payments to disabled veterans when they turn 67, the retirement age for receiving full Social Security benefits, which would save an estimated $48 billion.
Reducing disability benefits to veterans older than 67 who are receiving Social Security payments. This could save the government $11 billion.
Eliminating disability compensation for 1.3 million veterans with disability rates below 30 percent, saving $38 billion over an eight-year period.
They’re also recommending getting rid of manned human space missions.
Military.com has more details. You could also get the details of the report here.
Category: Military issues
Balancing the budget on the backs of vets. Seems to me I recall this discussion before.
Just about every time there is talks about budget cuts we are the first and it seems like the only ones to get cut.
Reducing disability benefits to veterans older than 67 who are receiving Social Security payments. This could save the government $11 billion. – Article.
Why should that happen? Eleven billion won’t even pay for fueling a fighter squadron, never mind the rest of it.
I have a better idea: Tax all earned income for SSRI instead of cutting the taxable level off at $118,000++. Doing that boosts the amount of revenue coming into the SSRI trust fund.
God forbid they cut the salary, benefits, and perks of senators and congresscritters.
They can barely scrape by on $175k/year. Ask AOC. She barely gets a living wage.
Yeah she’s having trouble paying her rent, just ask her. She must be telling the truth, she’s a member of Congress….
Welfare, the bloated sacred cow in the room.
The DNCs sacred flock of voters.
Think about it fellas. Each Veteran only votes only once on election day. The sacred flock?
You do the math.
“You do the math.”
Whut?
Define “welfare.”
Best definition is probably found at lemonparty.org
YW
I found a better one at meatspin.com
😉
MMwahahahaha
Yeah, well, you can GFY. I have MS, so I don’t want my rating screwed with by these penny pinchers. I can also have a thought in my head that “welfare” means a great deal of things.
Exactly, I had a sister (now deceased) who had a mental disorder, she could not function in a normal day to day way. She had to have assistance to live. Your MS is a physical problem that inhibits you from functioning day to day.
But what about the women that get paid for having baby after baby after baby, just for the money, many times because they were taught to live that way by their own mothers, who were taught by their mothers.
Monetary assistance from the Federal and State governments is supposed to be for those like you and my sister that really need it, not for the lazy shits gaming the system.
Honest question: which ones would you totally cut, reduce, or restructure? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_programs_in_the_United_States
“Honest question: which ones would you totally cut, reduce, or restructure?”
Totally cut, no, there are people that need help because there is no other way for them to live.
Reduce/restructure, yes, police the recipients for abuse and you will cut down on waste.
If a person is mentally capable and physically healthy enough to work, then they should. Lazy should not be rewarded.
“Yeah, well, you can GFY. I have MS”
Get a job jagoff..if you can screw around on the computer and winge, you can work.
I DO work you dumb fuck. Who said I didn’t? I’m rated by the VA, and that’s what I thought the discussion was about. Luckily, my case of MS is not as severe and has not progressed.
Not severe or progressive…I dunno, your temporal lobe seizures seem to be poorly controlled.
Blah blah blah. Shouldn’t you be somewhere saying how you “would hit that?”
Welfare and foreign aid. We could quit trying to buy the love of people that hate and resent us any minute now. $16.8b every year. To put it in terms the CBO will understand; That’s a savings of $168 billion over ten years.
Not sure where you got that number. Foreign Aid for 2019 is 27.6 Billion “requested”. So, foreign aid alone is a lot more than that.
Though I would say that there is an amount of it that is worthwhile and does provide benefit to us.
https://foreignassistance.gov/explore
I pulled it from here. https://www.usaid.gov/results-and-data/budget-spending
But yours is way cooler, that’s for sure. Looks like it’s probably more accurate as well. Either way it’s a butt load of money we’re sending to places that largely are not fans of ours.
How about RIFing the 400,000 or so “non-essential” sandcrabs out there sucking on the public pig.
No kidding. Aside from garbage piling up at national parks, does anyone even notice there’s hundreds of thousands of federal government employees not working?
How about just not giving Congress critters raises for about 10 years down the road?
[…] Raising TRICARE fees and Cutting Veterans Benefits to Slash Deficit […]
Tommy this and Tommy that….
an Tommy go away..
Climate change. Lose it.
Lose change?
Is there a reason savings are always presented as “$x over y years” other than to obscure how insignificant they really are? 33 billion over 10 years is 3.3 billion per year, 38 billion over 8 years is 4.75 billion per year. Given that last year’s budget was around 3.6 trillion (plus a 400-800 billion deficit), the proposed cuts would not even amount to saving a penny on the dollar, while simultaneously fucking over millions of families with higher costs and reduced benefits. Brilliant!
How much would be saved if CBO staff were replaced with cardboard cutouts?
And we’d probably get a 50% increase in efficiency over 50 years….
This is from the Duffelblog, right?
It’s not funny, so definitely not duffelblog.
Fuck Americans we got foreigners to give billions of dollars to instead – the swamp
These people should be ashamed of themselves. Their benefits should be zeroed out and no retirement.
What I liked was how they showed themselves to be a bunch of pussies at the end – they claimed to only be floating ideas, not making recommendations. Couldn’t even claim their own shit. Senator and Congressperson Snuffy hafta love these ideas in an election cycle.
These piddly attempts at savings don’t even begin to address balancing the budget. They always trot out these idiotic ideas every year to shit on veterans, while other fat budgets remain unexamined.
But no cuts here:
Record $135 billion a year for illegal immigration, average $8,075 each, $25,000 in NY
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/record-135-billion-a-year-for-illegal-immigration-average-8-075-each-25-000-in-ny
Well, just take the “savings” out of that program and tell people to get jobs. There are plenty of them available now.
I still think if they killed off the VA and paid for us do our own thing with real adult doctors, that would save them a metric shit ton of money.
I have an even better idea, and it would prove how much people REALLY want to be in politics.
Cut the salaries of Congress critters down to as much as $10/month, depending on the levels of their outside income, earned or unearned (as in dividends, etc.). They get a guaranteed pension after XX years, so if they serve more than one term, cut the pension.
Also, all of you go out into your back yards (if you have them) and yell at the sky, something like “no cutting vet benefits, screw Congress critters and the CBO instead” – whatever – as loud as you can.
I say we start with cutting the Congressional Budget Office, than Congress takes a $25,000 reduction in pay per member, and finally we outsource the TSA reducing its numbers by 80%, so that they just regulate the screeners at airports not conduct the screening (in some small airports they could provide the screening).
Oh, and any Members of Congress who want to can donate their salary to the sick, lame, and lazy (I mean poor and unable to work).
“Combat Vets” – expendable canon fodder. Keep the gov’t shutdown going another 5 days and POTUS can RIF the 800,000 useless gov’t employees and save $20 Billion. Enough to build the Wall and support Honorable Vets who have earned their place.
Nancy Pelosi decided that she and several other Congress critters could take a USAF-provided airplane, plus the USAF peeps, to Brussels and the Middle East while the shutdown is underway.
dTrump sent her a letter telling her ‘No, you need to stay here and work on border security with me.’
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/trumps-letter-to-pelosi-postponing-her-foreign-trip-amid-government-shutdown
Now you know where her real priorities are.
Didn’t Nanny Lugosi also vacation at some $4K a night luxury hotel in Hawaii while President Trump called for her to join him in DC to work on the current mess?
WHy, yes, she did.
It was at one of those ‘undiscovered’ beaches that have become expensive tourist traps.
She thinks she knows how to be a manipulative old cow, but she has run up against The Master now, who also happens to be a butthead. 🙂
This ought to be good… really good.
Anyone besides me think maybe the CBO’s “suggestions” will be trashed? I hope so. Otherwise, I’ll have to move into Dave Hardin’s garage and sleep in his bathtub. And that would really be annoying to all involved.