Military Officer - April 2008 - (Page 42) washingtonscene HELP OVERTURN RATE CUTS I Once again, MOAA needs your help to convince Congress to overturn Medicare rate cuts. Please visit http://capwiz .com/moaa/home and click on Stop Medicare/ TRICARE Payment Cuts to send your legislators an MOAA-suggested message. Urge them to avoid the July 2008 cut in Medicare/TRICARE payments to physicians. higher premiums apply to individual seniors with incomes over $82,000 ($164,000 for a married couple) as opposed to $80,000 and $160,000, respectively, last year. Additionally, the budget proposes freezing payment levels through FY 2011 for inpatient care, skilled nursing facilities, hospice care, and ambulance services, and a freeze through FY 2013 for home health agencies. Life After Walter Reed Senate presses DoD/VA cooperation. A t a Feb. 12 hearing, the Senate Armed Services Committee heard testimony from DoD and VA officials regarding improvements made for wounded warriors and their families. “I think ‘seamless’ transition is more an oxymoron, and we may just be better off calling the process ‘nearly seamless’ as a more achievable goal,” Sen. Ben Nelson (D-Neb.) said. His comments summed up the state of affairs between the two departments in transforming their systems. DoD, Army, and VA witnesses reported significant progress on seamless transition and strengthening relationships and lines of communication between DoD and the VA. But on a more basic and pressing issue — a transferable electronic medical record — an interoperable system solution is still many years away. MOAA agrees DoD and VA leaders dramatically have improved their working relationship, with significant improvements in leadership involvement, case management, and commitment of resources. But MOAA remains concerned about sustaining that momentum into the next administration as leaders change and competition heats up for funding. Chair Carl Levin (D-Mich.) asked DoD and VA officials to provide a legislative proposal for the establishment of a joint transition office. MOAA strongly agrees that a joint, permanent office is necessary to ensure continued progress between the two agencies. We need an institutional, jointly staffed structure to provide stability and continuity for the longer-term, rather than relying on the part-time involvement of the DoD-VA Joint Executive Council, whose department leaders will come and go and relative focus will wax and wane. All attendees agreed on the need for further clarification of disability evaluation guidelines, as well as more traumatic brain injury and PTSD care, treatment, and research and family support. Defense witnesses also were troubled by higher suicide rates during the past five years in the Army, as well as accidental deaths in wounded warrior transition units. Conference Focuses on TRICARE MOAA sits on panels. T he Military Health System Conference in Washington, D.C., addressed the full range of military health care programs, accomplishments, and needs. MOAA leaders participated in two particularly interesting panel discussions. MOAA President Vice Adm. Norb Ryan Jr., USN-Ret., was one of five distinguished panelists asked to address “the future of military health care.” Ryan emphasized the need to make the budget fit requirements rather than vice versa, expressing MOAA’s support for a defense budget equal to at least 4 percent of GDP. 42 MILITARY OFFICER APRIL 2008
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