I am okay with military treatment facilities focusing on active duty. I can find better, more experienced and more convenient care off base, but of course it isn’t free - we use TRICARE Select, which has higher co-pays than Prime but no enrollment fees (for now).
Military pharmacies are typically pretty awful, but it is hard to beat free. I typically use mail order (not free) or Walgreens (not free), which has government contract, as the service is much better. For some reason though, with some RX’s the cost at Walgreens is prohibitive - hundreds of dollars for whatever reason so that has forced us use the base pharmacy occasionally. Fixing things like that would help. I can certainly see where vets / retirees on a fixed income could struggle with pharmacy costs though. Perhaps they could make the mail order pharmacy free like the base pharmacy. Bottom line, is the benefits packages are always under attack come budget time. Hard to swallow when you know how much the Defense industrial base is raking in. I work at a large DOD acquisition organization so I see it first hand. I also don’t see many active duty senior military leaders advocating for retirees come budget time. They would rather have their military hardware.