Originally Posted by: grampi50 
With Obamacare screwing over military retirees, I'm wondering how high our copays for prescriptions and medical appointments will go. Just in the first year of changes, my prescriptions from Express Scripts, which were free for generic drugs last year, are now $7 per Rx. Medical visits last year had a copay of $12 for a primary care or specialist appointment, and a $30 copay for an emergency room visit. Now my copay is $20 per primary care visit, $30 for a specialist visit, and $60 for an ER visit. I understand these copays are going up again next year, and again the following year. If they go up as much as they did this year again over the next two years, we are going to end up with copays that are hundreds of dollars per visit. This is ridiculous! Why do they expect us retired vets to pay as much as civilians? Do they honestly think people will make a career out of the military if they keep taking our benefits away?
How did the ACA screw over military retirees? I am a retiree who is the son of a retiree. I've been tracking Tricare costs and changes for some time. I was not happy when they started charging for Prime, but what other option do I have for less cost? Prices for using civilian pharmacies were going up under Bush even for dependents of Active Duty.
And your complaints for the next year or two have NOTHING to do with Obama, and really very little to do with him and the ACA anyway. DoD has been trying to make retirees bear more of a cost for the past 40+ years, and every so often they get permission to raise the cost on us. Right now, blame a Republican Congress and Trump...they control right now. $30milion for a military parade would go a long way to pay for retiree medical care, but a Fascist/Soviet style parade is wanted by a draft dodger....so they are letting him have one. Nothing to actually have a true reason for one (like winning WWII for example), just a certain person saw one in France and said "I want one of these!" Never mind the cost, logistics and the fact everyone in the military involved would rather be doing almost anything else just doesn't come into consideration!
And they have already begun changing the military retirement to make it less than it was. First it was redux and now "blended". People are forced into the TSP and that is now part of their retirement. They are trying to make it more "civilian" vs the 20 years or nothing it used to be.
https://www.military.com/benefit...y-retirement-system.html I expect further degradation of benefits and the military retirement in years to come if this current Congress remains in its current composition. If only to try and pay for the $trillion deficits created so far! (and if ANYONE says Democrats are the deficit creators, I point out the only balanced budgets in recent history have been under Democratic Administrations, and Republicans have created more debt and bigger deficits despite their rhetoric, usually with giveaways to business and the 1%. For a micro version, look at OK and KS, and then compare to CA...which is now the 5th largest economy in the world. CA seems to do the opposite of what the Republicans have done in KS and OK, and other states, and yet seem to grow and improve their economy. They aren't perfect, but are doing way better than what the Republican plan seems to result in!)