If you like your TRICARE, you can keep your TRICARE

Trial balloons are funny things. You can see where, behind closed doors with at little bit of group-think, some ideas that seem reasonable in an isolated intellectual closed loop, once in the open just look like an autogenerating shi-ite storm.

At first I thought someone was just trolling the military community - but no, they're serious. Methinks this would not go over all that well. Via NavyTimes;

The Defense Department could slash its enormous health care budget by requiring Tricare beneficiaries not on active duty to get health care coverage through Affordable Care Act exchanges, according to several current and former congressional budget experts.
...
"It's a little radical, but should we be thinking about how some of the military system might transition some of their people to the Affordable Care Act exchanges, especially in sparsely populated areas of the country?" said Alice Rivlin, former director of the Congressional Budget Office and the Office of Management and Budget who now serves as a senior fellow in economic studies at the Brookings Institution.

"The case for the special supply of [health] services is strong for the active duty. For the families ... the case for having a dedicated supply system is much weaker. That suggests the possible appeal of the option Alice mentioned, which is to help them have fair, well-financed access to the general health care system,"

Oh, yes. Obamacare for family members and retired personnel.

... and from Skippy's favorite company;

... John Mayer, a military health and energy analyst with Booz Allen Hamilton, added the Pentagon should be under no obligation to continue providing "free health" care to those who have retired from military service and have access to health care either through their employers or the Affordable Care Act.

"Having a program where they can go in and get free health care, and do it as often as they want seems to be a burden that the American public shouldn't have to bear," Mayer said, speaking of the military retiree population who uses Tricare.

Marches on Washington? Yea, that might do it. Judging from the emails I received on the topic - not a confidence builder.

I don't think this has a shadow of a chance in Congress. However, if one has a phone and a pen, you can do a lot of things.