Regarding your article dated March 24, “Whidbey Community Physicians may no longer accept Tricare.”

I am an ex-Navy man. When I joined the Navy in 1958, I was promised medical treatment till I die if I enlisted for 20 years. Now the hospital at NAS Whidbey will no longer take people over age 65 stating not enough manpower, so they came up with “Tricare, and Tricare for life” to fill their obligation to us Navy retirees.

I understand the doctors in the area and throughout the U.S. are getting the shaft. Tricare does not pay them enough.

This being a military retirement town, what’s going to happen to us? I can drive to Seattle to the VA since I am 100 percent disabled and continue to receive my care. But what about the others? Most of them are like me and live on a fixed income (which is not much, my Navy retirement is about $800 and Social Security is about the same). If you take Tricare away from us you might as well put us all in pine boxes and start digging the holes.

Physicians drop Tricare, then Whidbey General Hospital. What’s next, the drugstore? It’s extremely depressing.

Roy G. McAlister

Oak Harbor