Healthcare benefits is an area of general undervaluation, particularly among young service members. But even mid-career personnel–those with 6 to 15 years of service–would typically prefer an immediate increase in pay in place of smaller TRICARE Prime fees. According to the survey results, 89 percent of mid-career personnel would prefer an immediate increase of $350 to basic pay in exchange for an $1,400 annual increase in the TRICARE Prime fee they would pay once retired.
Child, youth and school services is another area of undervaluation–75 percent of junior officers and 99 percent of all other rank groups don’t value those services to the extent it costs to provide them. Military exchanges, meanwhile, are valued as much or more than they cost by a majority of service members in each rank group.
Harrison’s overriding premise is that the all-volunteer military force in its current form is unsustainable, thanks to a 46 percent inflation-adjusted increase in costs per person in the active duty over the past decade. That increase also excludes war funding. If personnel costs continue growing at that rate–and the defense budget doesn’t grow in real terms, military personnel costs would consume the entire defense budget by 2039, Harrison says.