Military Officer - July 2007 - (Page 38)

washingtonscene Do You Have Legislative Questions? ■ Cmdr. René Campos, USN-Ret., MOAA’s military family expert, answered a range of questions during a May 24 online chat. We have archived this chat along with four previous chats on other topics for your convenience. Visit www .moaa.org/maylegischat for a complete recap. Send questions for upcoming chats to legis chat@moaa.org. It would have been much easier for the committee members to do nothing about these issues. For several years, they’ve seen SBP and concurrent receipt initiatives passed in the Senate — where it’s much easier to get ﬂoor amendments approved — only to get blamed when the initiatives were dropped during ﬁnal negotiations with the House. The fact that they struggled to come up with funding to do at least these modest efforts shows their determination to refuse to go another year without progress. We need to thank them, not bash them, even while we continue pushing for stronger measures. They know, as we do, that the ﬁrst small step to break the logjam of inaction usually leads to more and bigger steps. Task Force Talks Turkey Health care panel plans to push fee increases. T he DoD Task Force on the Future of Military Health Care provided a preliminary discussion of its interim report at a Defense Health Board meeting May 23. The report, required by the FY 2007 Defense Authorization Act, was due to the secretary of Defense and Congress by the end of May but was not available as this column went to press. The task force is composed of 14 members appointed by the secretary of Defense, of which half come from inside and half come from outside the department. It is cochaired by prominent health care economist Dr. Gail Wilensky and Air Force Vice Chief of Staff Gen. John D.W. Corley. The cochairs indicated their recommendations would include: ■ reviewing TRICARE contracts to ensure they contain the ﬂexibility required to allow for inclusion of best business practices; ■ “altering pharmacy incentives” (including beneﬁciary copayments) to encourage use of the less expensive mail-order system; ■ “rebalancing” beneﬁciary fees “at or below” the share of DoD costs they represented when TRICARE was implemented in 1996 (the cochairs indicated beneﬁciaries under 65 paid 11 percent of DoD costs in 1996 versus 4 percent today; DoD leaders previously cited those ﬁgures as 27 percent and 14 percent, respectively); ■ phasing in beneﬁciary fee increases over three to five years; ■ establishing a formula for regular fee increases in the future; ■ increasing the catastrophic expense cap (currently $1,000 for active duty families and $3,000 for retiree/survivor families); ■ establishing a tiered fee structure, with higher grades paying larger fees; and ■ requiring independent audits to ensure TRICARE pays after any other insurance. The cochairs said that if Congress is concerned about adverse impacts on retirees, Congress could provide a one-time retired pay increase to offset the higher fees. When the ﬂoor was opened for public comment, MOAA Government Relations Director Col. Steve Strobridge, USAFRet., was the only audience member to offer comments. Strobridge expressed MOAA’s concerns about using a percentage of DoD health costs to assess or establish beneﬁciary fees. “We know the beneﬁciary fees in the numerator of that fraction, but we’re not told what DoD costs are included in the denominator,” he said. “When the military deploys a large share of its medical staff, that shifts beneﬁciaries to private-sector care that costs the government more. In other cases, the government has opposed or neglected initiatives that could have saved hundreds of millions of dollars. A good share of DoD costs are military readiness or conscious business decision costs, for which beneﬁciaries shouldn’t be charged any share.” Wilensky acknowledged the difﬁculty of trying to attribute the cost of military 38 MILITARY OFFICER J U LY 2 0 0 7 http://www.moaa.org/maylegischat http://www.moaa.org/maylegischat

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Military Officer - July 2007 Contents From the Editor From the President Your Views MOAA Directory Rapid Fire Washington Scene Financial Forum Ask the Doctor Chapter Activities Cover Story: In Focus After the Kim Dynasty Animal House Paying Tribute MOAA Member Services Pages of History Faces of MOAA Information Exchange Advertising Index MOAA Scholarship Donors MOAA Calendar Sounding Taps Encore

Military Officer - July 2007

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