Military Retirees & Healthcare

[Scott DeWar]

So, how hard is it to instead sue the individual legislators? One needs special procedures (impeachment) to bring the President to court - does that hold for members of Congress as well?

Now this is a good question!

 

[Umbran]

Now this is a good question!

I am pretty sure it doesn't work. If individual legislators could be personally held accountable for governance, the chilling effect would mean we'd not have any government.

It doesn't mean I don't *want* to hold them accountable for some of the willful stupidity and nigh-treasonous harm that will come from their greedy choices, but the repercussions would be almost as bad.

 

[Scott DeWar]

Once again, I must back out of a line of thought. I REALLY do not want to get ban-hammered for expressing an impassioned opinion!

Having said that,

I now realize I just expressed my opinion in a way. If one has a threat of civil liability, A legislator would be more diligent to be a better legislator, In theory any way.

I know when it became law to Have to have insurance, it was intended to make people more careful drivers. Instead I ran into the attitude of "Oh well, I have insurance".

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

So, how hard is it to instead sue the individual legislators? One needs special procedures (impeachment) to bring the President to court - does that hold for members of Congress as well?

If it is a private citizen suing in civil court for something they did in their official capacity, then it falls under sovereign immunity. But if it is a criminal case for abuse of power, etc., they're much easier to target.

 

[Olgar Shiverstone]

Sigh ... I was ignoring political threads but the title caught my eye and this hits too close to home not to comment.
[MENTION=19675]Dannyalcatraz[/MENTION] has the right of it for the most part ... the sticking point being that the majority of military benefits are not expressly in the contract. Pull up a DD Form 4 and check the language -- the contract only states that benefits will be provided "according to law and regulation."

Regulations are set by DoD and service and can be changed at whim, laws adjusted according to the desires of the legislature -- and none of those changes violate the contract, as there is no baseline condition in the contract to compare to. Our military and civilian leaders and legislators generally try to do the right thing and "grandfather" people in when policies change (the multiple retirement systems is a good example) but that doesn't always happen and hasn't in the case of military and retiree health care. Yeah, supposedly we were promised free health care -- point to where that promise was made? We can't, unfortunately.

Personally I'd be a huge fan of having more explicit service contracts that spell out much more exactly what our benefits are at the point of entry into service so they'd (in theory) be more enforceable in the event of change, but I don't see that ever happening -- Congress likes the flexibility of dictating how the military is to be treated (even when they want to treat us well). And in any event it's not like servicemembers can generally sue the government for service-incurred faults or changes (Feres Doctrine, writ large, though IANAL).

Whether military retirees and service members deserve it is left as an exercise to the reader. At 22 years of active service and counting, I'm too biased to offer a balanced opinion other than to pose a question: what's the value of protection to the protected, when the protector is willing to grant the protected a writ of unlimited liability, to be cashed at will, in return for some future (and often, unrealized) benefit?

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

...the sticking point being that the majority of military benefits are not expressly in the contract.

That IS one of the major reasons why challenging this in court would be difficult. Any competent trial attorney could find out what benefits were offered at the time of signing, but since the contracts don't explicitly enumerate those benefits- and may not even reference the policies obliquely- meeting the Court's standards of proof would be an uphill battle.

Most might not even want to try. Only the real attack dogs might want to go after the Feds.

Now imagine trying to find a Rottweiler who is up to the challenge when you're on a fixed income, or have just entered the civilian workforce after several years on a military salary, and you're fighting for s few thousand bucks of healthcare benefits.

Odds are good they won't touch that case unless they can build a class-action suit out of it, because otherwise, the potential payout amounts to @ half a day of their billable hours.

 

[Joker]

Nope- it's all about the money. The military's personnel costs are- like in most businesses and institutions- one of their biggest categories.

Yeah, I understand it's about money. They would rather leave 300 new Abrahms tanks to rust in the desert than to do the right thing. But what I don't understand is how it can be legal. I get that you can be called up after service in times of need but having the terms of your contract changed seems Darth Vadian.

For a country that prides itself on supporting its troops, I hear a lot of horror stories where those same troops are getting the rawest possible deal. i.e. the VA not working properly, vets from American territories not getting the same benefits as vets from the 50 states, what happened to your father.

I suppose it's not entirely the politicians fault. If they choose to cut funding for nuclear sites that are obsolete or stop ordering equipment the military doesn't need, they'll likely get hammered by their constituents in the next election. Some of the blame has to fall on the populace for not willing to make a sacrifice for the people that are sworn to protect them.

I hope I'm making a little sense. I'm a bit drunk.

 

[Olgar Shiverstone]

Yeah, I understand it's about money. They would rather leave 300 new Abrahms tanks to rust in the desert than to do the right thing. But what I don't understand is how it can be legal. I get that you can be called up after service in times of need but having the terms of your contract changed seems Darth Vadian.

Sadly this is hardly new in the annals of military history and this sort of thing goes back before the Romans. More recently, consider Kipling:

Yes, makin' mock o' uniforms that guard you while you sleep
Is cheaper than them uniforms, an' they're starvation cheap;
An' hustlin' drunken soldiers when they're goin' large a bit
Is five times better business than paradin' in full kit.
Then it's Tommy this, an' Tommy that, an' "Tommy, 'ow's yer soul?"
But it's "Thin red line of 'eroes" when the drums begin to roll,
The drums begin to roll, my boys, the drums begin to roll,
O it's "Thin red line of 'eroes" when the drums begin to roll.

Even the US, which at least at the moment appears to hold its military and its veterans in relatively high regard, this treatment averages out to be poor. Back to the founding of the Republic, when the Continental Army was demobilized without pay, to post Civil War when veterans protested to gain pensions, to the Bonus Army of the '30s when even the Army was turned on its own, the memories of our citizens tend to be short.

There are risks in such treatment, and the risks are subtle yet extreme -- and it is one thing to take that risk with short term volunteers, and another yet to do it with professional soldiers. High regard is relatively recent. For more on the implications, I strongly recommend Jerry Pournelle's essay Mercenaries and Military Virtue. He wrote during a time in the not-to-distant past when the US military was not held in high esteem, and what the risks of those misunderstandings might mean if other lessons of history are applied.

 

[gamerprinter]

Yeah, I understand it's about money. They would rather leave 300 new Abrahms tanks to rust in the desert than to do the right thing. But what I don't understand is how it can be legal. I get that you can be called up after service in times of need but having the terms of your contract changed seems Darth Vadian.

I always felt I lucked out. I was in the US Army from 1983 -1987, however my Individual Ready Reserve status (IRR) which is the time period after my active duty status that I could be called back to war, ended the same day as the start of the Persian Gulf War. So technically, I could have been called back to serve, but wasn't.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

The trick is- beyond the issues of sovereign immunity confounding subsequent legal remedy- is that promises are made to entice you to join, but the contract you sign does not in any way reference the promises. There isn't any clause in your enlistment contract saying something like "See USC §1234.5(a) regarding your healthcare."