Military Officer - March 2006 - (Page 29)

washingtonscene Beneﬁciaries at many locations have difﬁculty ﬁnding providers willing to take them. ■ America can afford both weapons and military health care. Today’s defense budget (in wartime) is less than 4 percent of GDP, one-third lower than the peacetimeyear average since World War II. A country that can afford hundreds of billions of dollars in pork and tax cuts doesn’t need to make military retirees pay for weapons. ■ seek legislation restricting incentives private ﬁrms can offer employees to shift to TRICARE, or require matching payments to TRICARE; ■ establish centralized DoD “high-cost pharmacy” for central ordering and ﬁlling of prescriptions for exceptionally highcost drugs (as the Air Force already has done, with success); ■ maximize efﬁciency with a single national contract for all claims processing; ■ realign the military treatment facility pharmacy budget process for centralized funding, with a greater emphasis on accountability and cost-shifting; and ■ test voluntary participation in Medicare Advantage Regional PPO to foster chronic care improvement and disease management programs. Health Fee Hike Threat Is No Joke ■ DoD’s proposal to pay Options Exist to Reduce Military Health Costs The government should be doing more to improve TRICARE and promote efﬁciency rather than shifting more costs to beneﬁciaries. It should: ■ encourage retention of other health insurance by making TRICARE a true second-payer to other insurance, as TFL is to Medicare; ■ eliminate DoD-unique administrative requirements that increase contractor overhead charges (and thus increase costs for DoD); ■ size military facilities (least costly care option) to reduce reliance on civilian Prime networks (most costly care option) and treat more Medicare-eligibles; ■ negotiate with drug manufacturers to secure discounts in the TRICARE retail pharmacy network (the most costly venue) or seek legislation mandating drug manufacturers’ extension of federal pricing to the TRICARE retail pharmacy network (rather than passing along higher fees to beneﬁciaries); ■ stimulate migration to the much-lowercost mail-order pharmacy by eliminating all mail-order copayments and doing more to educate beneﬁciaries and providers on the advantages of mail-order pharmacy; ON THE WEB ■ For more information about the fee in- its costs out of your wallet is the most serious threat to military benefits in recent years. If this round of proposed fee hikes goes through, an enrollment fee and deductible for TRICARE For Life may well be the next steps. VA Disability Claims Soar Key committee chairman pledges help to ease backlog. T creases and MOAA’s efforts to avert them, visit MOAA’s Legislative Action Center online: www .moaa.org/healthfees. he House Veterans’ Affairs Committee heard testimony in December from a retired Air Force ﬂight surgeon, senior VA ofﬁcials, and a panel of veterans’ service organizations (VSOs) concerning mounting challenges facing the VA claims system. Dr. William Jones, USAF-Ret., said his claims for service-connected disabilities have been held up for six years. VA claims for initial disabilities have increased by 36 percent in the last ﬁve years. Witnesses testiﬁed that the system is plagued with poor quality, inconsistencies between VA ofﬁces, mounting demand, and insufﬁcient resources. “The VA system is programmed to procrastinate,” said one witness. A Government Accountability Ofﬁce report released at the [CONTINUES ON PAGE 32] MARCH 2006 MILITARY OFFICER 29 http://www.moaa.org/healthfees http://www.moaa.org/healthfees

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Military Officer - March 2006 Contents From the Editor President’s Page Call For Board Nominations Your Views MOAA Directory Rapid Fire Washington Scene Financial Forum MOAA Member Services Ask the Doctor Chapter Activities Live It Up! Top Picks On the Road Again Destination: Arizona By the Numbers Cover Story: One Clean Shot From Combat to Congress Pages of History Information Exchange Advertising Index MOAA Calendar Sounding Taps Encore

Military Officer - March 2006

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