Michele Bachmann warned that active duty and military personnel will be forced out of the government-funded TRICARE health care system and into Obamacare, during a CBS/National Journal debate on national security on Saturday. Bachmann said she would support “modernizing” the health care program into “a fixed cost system” — one in which the government pays a pre-determined amount in health care benefits — but argued that Obamacare could destroy the existing government health program:
MAJOR GARRETT: And when you talk about tri-care, that’s the military medical system. What do you mean when you say, “Reform,” does that mean cuts in benefits?
MICHELLE BACHMANN: No. I think that we need to have modernization. That’s what the biggest problem is right now with– with Social Security, with Medicare, with Medicaid. We’re continuing to abide by the models that we had when they were first originated. There’s very few businesses that maintain their similar business practices 45 years after inception or 75 years after inception. We have to modernize. But we also know what the future is in health care, don’t we? It is Obama Care. And quite likely, Tri-care, Medicare, all of these will collapse under President Obama, and everyone will be put into Obama Care. No one want to be– in Obama Care.
Watch it:
While the Affordable Care Act does not affect TRICARE or veterans health care, Bachmann’s proposals to curtail the government-funded program will. In January, she proposed and later withdrew a wildly unpopular plan to slash $4.5 billion in veterans services and reduce disability compensation for 150,000 veterans. But over the summer, Bachmann pledged to support and bolster the existing government health care program. “It is our duty, first and primarily, to protect our veterans and to make sure that you receive not only the respect, but also the care that you have paid for very heavily with your service to our nation,” Bachmann told members of the American Legion in August. “As president, I will assure that those who serve today as well, and in the past, have the highest access to the best care, both of health, mental health and rehabilitative care that the world has to offer.”
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