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Greens Urge Full Tricare Funding for Military Retirees, National Guard Reservists GREEN PARTY OF THE UNITED STATES Thursday, May 4, 2006 Contacts: WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Green Party candidates and leaders urged Congress to reject the Bush Administration's attempts to raise fees and reduce coverage under the Pentagon's Tricare medical system, and called on Congress and President Bush to provide coverage for all members of the National Guard. "The White House and Pentagon have placed American service members, including National Guard reservists, at peril in a war based on greed and global military dominance, while undermining and denying their benefits," said Howie Hawkins, a Vietnam era Marine veteran and candidate for the Green nomination for U.S. Senator from New York. "Americans who truly support our troops are demanding that they be withdrawn from Iraq immediately, and that they receive the health coverage and health care they deserve." A 2005 report sponsored by the National Guard Association of the United States noted that 21% of reservists lack basic health insurance and recommended extending Tricare to these 865,000 reservists and their dependents for life. According to the report, the National Guard now represents 50% of all U.S. forces in Iraq and Afghanistan; an AP newswire reported that in a two-month period at the end of 2005, 56% of U.S. deaths in Iraq were reservists. Greens defended full funding for Tricare, and noted the following:
"The Bush White House and the Rumsfeld Defense Department have shown little regard for the lives and well-being of service members since the beginning of the Iraq invasion," said Ed Boyd, Green candidate for Governor of Maryland <http://www.EdBoydforGovernor.org> and a veteran of the U.S. Navy. "The administration sent troops into battle with insufficient protective equipment, and exposed troops and Iraqi civilians to toxic chemical weapons like depleted uranium and white phosphorus. The President's rejection of our obligation to provide full coverage adds insult against older soldiers to injury of younger troops." The Green Party of the United States has strongly opposed the U.S. invasion of Iraq, and has called for an immediate end for an occupation and for impeachment of President Bush and Vice President Cheney for numerous violations of law, abuses of power, and deceptions used to justify the invasion. Greens noted that tens of thousands of Iraqi civilians and more than 2,400 U.S. troops have been killed in the war. The party supports single-payer national health insurance, which will provide every American with guaranteed health care, regardless of age, income, ability to pay, or prior medical condition, at a cost to working people far below what they now pay for private coverage. "The provision of Tricare to all our reservists will be a good start, but we need to enact a more fundamental solution to the health care crisis -- national health insurance based on a single-payer insurance entity like Medicare or the VA, which will not only keep costs down but help incentivize the highest quality care," said Dr.Henry Duke, founder of Alabama Health Care for All, member of Physicians for a National Health Program <http://www.pnhp.org>, and a Green Party activist from Alabama. MORE INFORMATION Green Party of the United States
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