Military Officer - August 2008 - (Page 34)

washingtonscene COLA Watch ■ In June, the Bureau of Labor Statistics announced the CPI jumped a full percentage point in May, bringing cumulative inflation to 4.5 percent for the first eight months of the fiscal year. With four months to go, odds are the 2009 COLA will be the largest in a long time. The bottom line is that they cared more about being able to claim, “I voted for a ﬁx,” than they did about actually making sure a ﬁx got enacted in time. As this article went to press, Medicare payments to doctors were scheduled to be cut 10.6 percent starting July 1. Also as of July 1, speech-, physical, or occupational therapy patients for whom Medicare already had paid at least $1,810 for therapy in 2008 were scheduled to have further Medicare payments for that care stopped. TRICARE doesn’t have a therapy payment cap like Medicare does, so TRICARE therapy patients should be OK. For TRICARE For Life patients, TRICARE will pick up payments when Medicare stops — but only after the $150 TRICARE deductible has been satisﬁed. TRICARE patients had a little more breathing room. Although TRICARE doctor payments are tied to Medicare’s, there’s usually about a month’s delay in updating TRICARE payment ﬁles when Medicare makes a change. This isn’t the ﬁrst time Congress has failed to stop a Medicare payment cut. In 2006, Congress missed the deadline but approved a ﬁx within a few weeks and made it retroactive. That caused doctors and Medicare administrators lots of headaches in the interim. But in the end, the lost payments were made up. And TRICARE patients never were affected, because Congress ﬁxed the rates before TRICARE got around to implementing the cuts. As of the last week in June, there were two possible scenarios. Scenario one: After Congress went into recess, the president issued orders to Medicare to hold all claims until July 15. That would give Congress eight days to ﬁx the problem after coming back to work July 7. If a new ﬁx gets signed into law by then, Medicare will process the claims, and the doctors simply will get paid a few days late. AUGUST 2008 Scenario two: If a new ﬁx doesn’t ﬁnd its way into law until after July 15, the cuts will go into effect, and retroactive payments eventually will be made. But that scenario increases the risk that some number of doctors will get fed up with the hassles and decide not to accept any more Medicare or TRICARE patients. Whatever Congress does after July 4, they could have done before July 1 and prevented this mess. If the president, the House and the Senate, and Republicans and Democrats had been willing to compromise — just a little — health care access for our seniors and military beneﬁciaries would not have been put at risk in this irresponsible way. Rules Apply — Or Do They? Selective application hurts credibility. A ny parent or grandparent knows all about the “do as I say, not as I do” rule — and its pitfalls. Don’t expect any credibility from kids if you establish rules for them that you don’t live by yourself. So it is with Congress’ “mandatory spending” rules, which apply only when congressional leaders want them to. Want to ﬁx an inequity with military retired pay, survivor beneﬁts, or health care for Medicare-eligibles? Sorry, but those (along with Social Security, Medicare, and many others) are “mandatory” or “entitlement” spending programs, and upgrades to those programs face built-in legislative impediments. More than a decade ago, congressional leaders decided these programs were growing too fast, and they had to act to keep themselves from spending the treasury dry on programs that automatically are adjust- 34 MILITARY OFFICER

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Military Officer - August 2008

Military Officer - August 2008 Contents MOAA Online From the Editor From the President Your Views MOAA Directory Rapid Fire Washington Scene Chapters in Action Financial Forum Ask the Doctor MOAA Member Services Cover Story: A Stronger Voice Virtual Combat Mental Floss Steady as She Goes Pages of History Faces of MOAA Member Books Information Exchange Advertising Index MOAA Calendar Sounding Taps MOAA Scholarship Donors Encore

Military Officer - August 2008

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