Afternoon read: Sequestration cuts into military education support
Photo: National Center for Veteran Studies
I’m getting tired of writing about the sequester, you’re getting tired of hearing about it (and not just from me), but it’s just starting to get rolling, unless something happens to end it (this is the subject of President Obama’s weekly address this week, video here and a transcript here.)
This morning David Sommerstein reported on how sequestration could affect the Akwesasne Mohawk nation: It looks like cuts to education and law enforcement. Today the Watertown Daily Times reports that the Army is suspending its tuition assistance program as a result of the sequester. That program makes up to $250 per credit hour with an annual limit of $4,500 (according to some math I did earlier this month, that buys you about a year at Jefferson Community College if you live in the county.) More on tuition assistance here.
Veteran Josh Jones (seen here in his dorm room at Paul Smiths College) went back to school with help from the Post-9/11 GI Bill, which will not be part of the cuts described in this post. Brian Mann reported on Josh and returning veterans like him in three stories late in 2012. Photo: Mark Kurtz.
JCC has 102 students who use this program, and about a third of the school’s student body is affiliated with the military or has a spouse who is. In the article, JCC continuing education dean Jill M. Pippen says the school will lose more than $100,000 if this funding goes away, and that impact might force the school to consider reducing its course offerings.
Other schools in our region have far fewer students using this particular type of funding, not surprisingly: SUNY Potsdam has 11; Canton has 18; and Clarkson and St. Lawrence have few to none.
GI Bill funding is still available, by the way, as are other funding programs. Servicemembers who are currently enrolled in courses using tuition assistance won’t be affected.
This for me is among the most painful cuts I’ve seen. Education for servicemembers has long been part of our compact with those who agree to risk, and even lose, their lives in service to our country. It’s a pretty big deal. And although tuition assistance doesn’t provide nearly as much support as the GI Bill does, taking swipes at that compact seems like something our government should take pains to avoid.
We’re in early days with the sequester, and it seems to behoove our government to deal with this now before it gets worse. I’m obviously not advocating for any particular way of dealing with it (that’s not my job or my place here), but let’s keep it front and center that these cuts aren’t just a political football. They’re really cutting into us as a nation.
” Artificially manipulating health insurance to provide “coverage” for all will destroy the health insurance industry as we know it.”
Gee, Larry, I am on Medicare, and let me tell you, there are no scare quotes around its coverage. From what I read, though, there are plenty of “low cost” health insurance policies provided by the private insurance industry that indeed provide what deserves to be styled “coverage”.
larry, do you know anything about obamacare at all? it’s chock full of cost containment mechanisms. it takes major steps towards curbing unnecessary treatments and procedures. in fact that’s the whole point.
look, this isn’t some pie-in-the-sky abstract debate. the observed reality, when you look at various countries’ health care systems, is that (broadly speaking) the more involved the government is, the cheaper the health care. when you compare with canada and europe, the u.s. has the most private system, and accordingly the highest costs (by far). advocates of obamacare believe it will work because it’s based on principles that have been proven to work elsewhere.
The “whole point” of Obamacare is to provide affordable health insurance to people without it. People confuse the cost of insurance with the cost of care. Insurance is a mathematical exercise; adding unisurable people to the mix will increase costs for all. Not regulating the cost of care will do the same. What we have here is a pastiche of nice ideas without any actuarial basis and conseuently, without any chance of success. You’re correct about some of the principles working elsewhere but only as part of more comprehensive sysytems.
Why must you always preface your response with a challenge to the intelligence or knowlege of any person who makes a statement you disagree with? The “I’m-smarter-than-you” attitude got old in about the sixth grade. Grow up.
tootight,
I agree in the long run the Defense Industry is producing a product that is not highly productive for our society. To the degree that we do need a defense “product” and we do, this is fine. However as you state those trillions of resources that we don’t need to spend are being misspent and would be more productive if they were spent in the private sector on what people want to buy or in the public sector on infrastructure and true scientific research. There are defense spinoff technologies that have found private applications, but they are secondary. If you took all of those engineers and scientists who spend their days thinking and planning and designing really expensive really effective ways to make weapons and applied them to designing new cars, ways to get solar energy or ways to cure disease or ways to go to mars, or ways to build new types of computing technology; it would be a much better application of their talents.
I think the issue is the short run…meaning five to ten years of real pain and disruption if you put them all out of work at once.
Meanwhile we are sitting up here with 12% unemployment, Jefferson at 11% Franklin at 11%, wow you know I think the most important thing we could do would be to oppose wind energy and oil exploration and new ski resorts, makes sense to me. Let them go to social services, the modern day way of saying let them eat cake.
http://northcountrynow.com/news/st-lawrence-county-jobless-rate-jumps-2-percent-december-january-reflecting-state-and-national-
“We could layoff the entire IRS. ”
Then you would be here complaining about high unemployment numbers.
you’re right larry, i got carried away when i wrote that the whole point of obamacare is about cost containment, and i apologize for that.
but obamacare is absolutely not just about providing insurance to people currently without it. it makes loads of changes to way to the way health care gets paid for. cost containment, or “bending the curve” as it’s commonly put, is a huge part of the package. (and there are early signs that it’s already working.)
from what you’ve written, it’s clear that you’re ignorant of this. when you write “Meanwhile, the root causes of the health care crisis, out-of-control-cost of care and unnecessary treatments and procedures, are not being addressed,” you reveal that you’re clueless. i mean, that’s just completely backwards. sorry if i’m hurting your delicate feelings, but nonsense deserves a forceful response.
I hope it works hermit I really do. You know it means less reimbursement to our north country hospitals, I am not sure how that works since many are already closing because of less reimbursements. To cut costs means to cut salaries of people who work in health care and to cut income of drug providers, will this bill do that? It might, but frankly I doubt it. To reduce costs you need to make base systemic changes to the health care system; limit tort awards-by a lot, reduce the cost of medical education—by a lot, reduce the profits of large drug corporations by a lot, I mean a whole bunch of people are getting wealthy because of our current system they will fight VERY hard to stop any change. I don’t think Obama care does anything frankly, we will know next year, I wonder how many supporters of obama are next year will stand up and say “see this is working” to date it seems they will just blame Bush.
Eight years, where is the leader? Still blaming poor old George.
Anyway its all good 12.2% unemployment is “normal” I guess we should just all relax because all of these economic development awards we have been winning show how much we care.