subscribe  |    email  |    print

To Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and the rest of the Pentagon budgeteers, who are at last taking steps to bring DoD’s health care spending under control.

The provisions advanced in the 2013 budget proposal — in particular, the various increases in Tricare fees — will tilt the system back toward its original fiscal design while holding the burden on service members well below what a civilian in a comparable job might pay.

Various groups already are marshaling opposition in Congress, whose tinkering is largely responsible for sending DoD medical bills skyward in the first place. Lawmakers ought to welcome Panetta’s proposals as a good start — for that is all that they are.