Pentagon health costs cut into defense spending

MarketWatch: Defense Secretary Robert Gates predicts health care costs will eat up about 10 percent of the military's budget by 2015, up from 6 percent now. "At a time when the overall U.S. defense budget growth is being constrained by a Congress nervous over a ballooning federal deficit, every dollar that goes to health care is one dollar less for purchasing and upgrading military equipment." Driving the spending are an increasing number of veterans eligible for retiree benefits. Out-of-pocket costs for these retirees remain unchanged since 1995. The cost of a veteran insuring a family is just more than one-tenth of the cost a typical family pays for health care each year (Hinton, 9/9).

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This article was reprinted from khn.org with permission from the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation. Kaiser Health News, an editorially independent news service, is a program of the Kaiser Family Foundation, a nonpartisan health care policy research organization unaffiliated with Kaiser Permanente.