I call them (there are two) the Intolerable Acts. They really are, in my mind, right up there with the Port of Boston laws enacted by Parliament before the Revolution.
Doc Fix - what a joke on We The People. Here's how it works and why it causes such a mess. Imagine, if you will, that you are broke, your bill payers are hounding you, but you cannot declare bankruptcy. But there is this thing you really want. You tell yourself it won't cost that much, and you tell your creditors that it will actually save money in the long run and make payments to them easier. That's what Doc Fix is. It starts with the annual statement of what Medicare will pay docs, which is always predicated upon both increased efficiency (usually couched as "elimination of fraud, waste, and abuse) and therefore ALWAYS a decrease over the previous year. Since none of the efficiencies ever occur and since costs go up, Congress always enacts a "fix" to cover the costs. So the real cost is Base Program + Doc Fix. (You know, Enron officials went to jail for this...)
Tri-Care - no change due to the Intolerable Acts. That's at least some good news on this. They left that program alone. I have to give some thought as to what that means moving foward, but at the moment don't have enough to form an opinion.