The Joint Chiefs support a sharp rise in TRICARE fees for under-65 retirees and their families, they say, because retiree health costs are soaking up dollars needed to buy new weapons and sustain force readiness.

The problem they describe is real but their solution is flawed, says Dov S. Zakheim, the Department of Defense comptroller from 2001 to 2004.

Zakheim doesn’t oppose raising TRICARE fees. His "sympathies," he said, are with Defense officials struggling with soaring personnel costs and a Congress that has approved "one benefit after another benefit after another."

But the proposed TRICARE fee increases, for all the angst they’ve caused, are a weak response to the "inexorable" cost growth of military health care seen in recent years, Zakheim said.

A far more effective solution, he argued, would be to shift part or all of current health care expenses out of the defense budget. But, Zakheim suggested, the fee hikes so unpopular with younger retirees as well as the current career force will be no more effective than a speed bump in slowing accelerating health care costs.

Defense officials are fighting over how to solve the rising cost of health care and their solution, at least for the moment, is to raise prices for TRICARE. Many don't believe this will help at all, but it looks like it's going to happen. Do you think they should raise the price, or find another way?

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