The FY2009 DoD budget proposal calls for increases ranging from 100% to 400% in TRICARE (the military medical program for active duty and retirees) pharmacy fees, moving TRICARE in a single step from one of the best drug benefit programs to one that is decidedly second rate.
Two insiders of the “military reform movement” of the 1970s and ’80s have written what amounts to a tell-all: Who was in the movement, who supported it, and who claimed to support it but in the end betrayed it. The military reform movement, for those unfamiliar with the term, was a bi-partisan effort to try to get the Pentagon to buy weapon systems that worked, adopt doctrines that had proven to win, and create personnel and training programs to support the new doctrines, weapons, and tactics. All of these were opposed by the senior leadership of the Pentagon, with few exceptions, and after an initial wave of enthusiasm, by the key leaders of Congress.