It is sad to see retirees protest lost benefits. Sadness turns to alarm for military leaders, however, when picket lines form in front of recruiting stations.
It happened in mid-November when retirees, angered by declining access to military hospitals, protested before recruiting offices in several Texas towns. A senior Defense official warned that the group, which said it did not want “to jeopardize the security of this nation” was on a course of action “that will do just that.” But retired Army First Sergeant Ward Coston Jr., a group leader, shrugged off the warning, saying he hopes retirees begin picketing recruiting stations across the nation.
Coston, 67, formed The Military Retirees Coalition last year after he got stuck with a $12,000 bill following heart by-pass surgery. A civilian hospital performed the operation when doctors at Sheppard Air Force Base near Wichita Falls said they were not staffed for it. Given Coston’s grave condition, a trip to a military medical center in San Antonio was deemed too risky. After his recovery, Coston tried twice to get the military to pick up the costs Medicare would not pay. It refused. “After 23 years in the Army, I thought they owed me,” he said. Fie wrote a letter to the local newspaper, asking to hear from other angry retirees. “My phone rang off the hook,” he said, and the coalition was formed. It claims 3,000 members within 50 miles of Wichita Falls. A few, he said, are retired two- and three-star officers.
“Our purpose is to restore full medical and dental benefits we were promised—and earned.” Coston said he was encouraged after the group picketed Sheppard and saw the average wait by retirees to land a medical appointment drop by several months. The group became concerned, however, when Tricare (the military’s new managed-care program) took effect on 1 November in most of Texas, as well as Arkansas, Louisiana, and Oklahoma. Because Medicare-eligibles cannot enroll and younger retirees must pay fees, cost shares, and agree to accept civilian care providers, the coalition views Tricare as a further decline in “free” retiree health care.
When a recruiter friend urged Coston, half in jest, not to begin now to picket recruiting stations, Coston said he could not resist. He wrote to Defense Secretary William Perry, saying the protest would begin 13 November unless in-service care was restored to retirees. The coalition targeted several Texas recruiting sites. The biggest turnout, about 50 retirees, appeared at the Wichita Falls combined recruiting station. Retirees handed out pamphlets describing lost benefits. Some warned young people entering the station to demand that promises of future benefits be in writing and signed by a Defense official. At least one young lady took that advice, Coston said. When the recruiter told her such a guarantee was not possible, Coston recalled, “she came back out, got in her car, and hollered ‘Thank you.’”
Coston did get a reply from the Defense Department. W. S. Sellman, Director of Accession Policy, blamed retirees’ frustration on a “demographic revolution” in the 1960s and 1970s that made any implied guarantee of free health care impossible to keep. He noted that in 1956, retirees, their dependents, and survivors comprised only 11% of eligible medical beneficiaries. Today, they represent 52%. It is a bad time to be harassing recruiting offices, he added. Not enough young people today “see the relevance of military service,” he said. The propensity of youth to enlist is at “an all time low,” with only 26% saying they probably will join. “Our hard-working recruiters need all the support we can give them. Please help them; don’t hurt them.”
Coston was unswayed. “When we were sent into combat, we did not tell our government we couldn’t fight because there was no space available, or we couldn’t afford it,” said Coston, who served three tours in Vietnam with aviation repair units. The coalition movement, he said, is spreading. Other angry retirees are opening chapters in Arizona, California, Florida, Illinois, Michigan, and Washington state. Apart from a lone recruiter’s complaint that retirees should picket Congress and not his recruiting station, Coston said the reaction has been overwhelmingly positive.
“I have had high-ranking officials on active duty tell me ‘You’re saying the things I cannot say, doing the things I cannot do. More power to you.’” he said. “If you think about it, it really does make sense” said a Defense health official about the protest. “What they must be saying is there was a breach of contract in coming into the service.” But, he added quickly, whatever recruiters might have promised years ago, the law referred only to space-available care. The shift to Tricare, he said, is intended to improve access for all beneficiaries. Older retirees will be included if Congress adopts a Defense Department recommendation and requires Medicare to reimburse the military for any cost growth linked to treating Medicare eligibles. The proposal is called Medicare subvention.
Back at Wichita Falls, Technical Sergeant Dottie Moore, an Air Force recruiter, said the picket line was not hurting business. Young applicants are not worried about health care in retirement, she said. “They’re looking for education benefits and job security.”
But Moore, 16 months from retirement herself, said she sympathized with the cause. “I fully support what they’re doing,” she said. “I do not agree with where they’re doing it.”