Originally Posted by
Gen6
Yes I am oversimplifying in a response to a post that implied being on Tricare saves the company thousands of dollars. A healthy family is paying way more in their monthly deduction than the cost to administer the plan. That excess is pooled to cover the folks that use more. Not being on the company plan saves the company nothing if you are healthy and actually reduces the funds available for plan administration and costs paid by the company. Trying to defend PS with the savings people are arguing is nonsensical. PS will cost a lot at the expense of something else like vacation or pay rates, etc that benefit all. You are talking about around $500 per round trip say 4 times a month times 12 times the number of commuters. Do the math.
It’s a false comparison to say if “I’m healthy.” Actuaries just look at your age and risk factor and it all goes into a big algorithm based on the risks of all of the members to spit out a premium, of which the company pays 80% at the moment. The fact that you are paying 20% of the cost, tells you there is a rather big dollar figure for the average person. Don’t use it, but I know it’s expensive because I hear the complaining. So if you’re paying $800/month, that’s a total cost of $4k/month.
So you can say, reserve rules, don’t care I’m not a reserve. PS, don’t care, don’t commute. Healthcare, spouse gets free healthcare, don’t care. So then, we should only focus on pay rates, vacation and training, but then someone will want those other things.