Washington's budget negotiators are considering cost-saving changes in the nation's entitlement programs, with one notable exception: military health care.
Like the rest of the U.S. health system, the military's program, known as Tricare, has a cost problem. For years, the Pentagon has sought to raise fees and revamp the system, with successive Defense secretaries warning that the program, if left unchecked, would eat into the rest of the military budget.
Pentagon overhaul efforts, however, have been rejected repeatedly by Congress, where there is broad, bipartisan opposition to raising health-care costs for America's military. And in the current round of budget talks, which are aimed at averting January's tax increases and spending cuts, no one has yet suggested helping to cut the deficit with the billions that could potentially be saved by making changes to Tricare.
"It's a third rail for both parties," said Todd Harrison, a defense specialist at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, a nonpartisan think tank with close ties to the Pentagon/.../
Mr. Harrison, the defense budget analyst, said the Pentagon, like the nation as a whole, has to get a handle on rising health-care costs or risk seeing the military shrink instead.
"There aren't easy options here, but when you think about it in the larger context of the defense budget, you're going to have to make some tough decisions," he said.