Ike Puzon posted on January 25, 2011 14:09
Washington Post: Letters to the Editor
The Jan. 20 editorial "The Pentagon cuts" endorsed Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates' plan to increase health-care fees for retired military people based on a comparison of military and civilian premiums.
Unfortunately, this simple cash comparison ignored the obvious: that career military people are required to prepay far greater premiums for their health care than any civilian ever has or ever will, through two or three decades of arduous service and sacrifice. That allegedly great military health-care deal is open to virtually anyone. All they have to do is sign up to go to boot camp and spend every other year in Iraq or Afghanistan or whatever other conflict their government cares to commit them to for the next 20 to 30 years.
Generations of military people have been induced to serve extended careers under those conditions because their government promised that their service would earn them a unique benefits package above what they could expect in civilian life. Yet once they've fulfilled their part of the bargain, their leaders (and editorials like The Post's) tend to compare only apples-to-oranges military vs. civilian cash payments. This disingenuously denies past promises and retroactively devalues military retirees' decades of sacrifice and service.
Norb Ryan Jr., Alexandria, President of the Military Officers Association of America.