Military benefits under fire.

• Author: Mochow, Rick
• Position: Readers' Forum - Letter to the editor

* In reference to your August 2011 Defense Watch, "Soon to Be Added to List of Pentagon's Unaffordable Luxuries: People in Uniform," whenever we use the term "entitlement," I think we need to examine whether it was to fulfill a contract or was a give-aw-ay. Military recruiters have used the benefits to encourage talented young people to accept the risks associated with military service (which includes dying for their country) and still relatively low pay (compared to police and firefighters in most areas, whose benefits are also extremely good). We have a contract with these people and the retired service members have earned the pay, health care and other costly benefits.

It is beyond me why we keep having these discussions about health care out of context. Health care should not be a military budget issue at all, any more than it should be a cost to commercial companies when competing with manufacturers in other developed countries. Defense organizations across the board opposed health care reform at the national level and held on to the cost as a military "entitlement" when we could have transferred the cost to the general pool.

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