More than 1,000 airmen who were promised six months of government-paid health insurance when they left the service voluntarily are having their coverage canceled, with the military now saying they were never actually entitled to it, the
Air Force Times reports.
The reversal has left scores of former airmen who took severance packages in recent weeks scrambling for an alternative, and wondering how the Air Force could sanction what some critics call a bait and switch.
Message boards and Facebook pages lit up with complaints from affected service members and their family members as word of the revoked insurance trickled out.
"And now, 10 days after his separation, we hear for the FIRST time on the news that he will never get these benefits," the wife of one outgoing airman wrote in the comments section of the Air Force Times article.
The Air Force is blaming the episode on a clerical mixup at some bases where airmen applied for separation under a program intended to help the service cut personnel costs.
Ex-airmen interviewed by the Air Force Times said that they exited voluntarily, and made future plans, based in part on assurances they would get six months of transitional health coverage.
The Air Force has now ruled they are ineligible for an insurance extension that is only for airmen who are "involuntarily separated," as in laid off — a not-uncommon fate for officers in today's era of squeezed Pentagon budgets.
“It’s a hit in the gut,” one outgoing captain told the Times.
A major who took the buyout said he is fighting the insurance revocation, but is still "in limbo" with coverage for himself and his family, the Times reported.
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