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The Pentagon is expected to propose big
cuts in Army manpower in the FY2007 budget request, especially
in the National Guard. But House Armed Services Committee
Chairman Duncan Hunter (R-CA) and other Hill leaders vow to
fight the proposals. Chairman Hunter is right.
A panel of House and Senate Armed
Services Committee staffers at the annual TRICARE conference
raised lots of questions about the Pentagon’s plan to sock
military retirees with significant health care fee increases.
The House reconvened this week and
passed Congress’s budget savings package (S. 1932) repealing the
scheduled 4.4% Medicare physician payment cut that automatically
took effect Jan. 1.
Civilian and military defense leaders
keep warning about a long and difficult war on terrorism. But
that isn't keeping them from urging Congress to cut the Army by
one combat brigade and the National Guard force by six brigades,
about 17,000 thousand Guard billets.
Last year, after a top-to-bottom force
review, Army leaders said they need a total of 77 combat
brigades to meet mission requirements. At that force level,
they said, active duty combat soldiers would spend one year out
of three away from their families, and Guard and Reserve troops
would spend 18 months away from their families every five or six
years.
At the time, MOAA expressed skepticism
that the all-volunteer force could handle such long-term family
sacrifices, which would far exceed the experience of most
military members over the last 50 years. Eventually, we said,
such arduous requirements would almost certainly extract a
significant toll on retention and readiness.
Congress shared our concern, and added
20,000 troops to the Army's strength in FY2005 and another
10,000 in FY2006 -- over Pentagon objections.
Now, Army and Defense leaders say
they've reworked the numbers and discovered that the Army only
needs 70 combat brigades.
Republican and Democratic leaders have
had the same reaction to this number-jimmying: it's an exercise
in budget-capping that has little to do with real military
requirements. It's all about cutting people to pay for weapons.
Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist
(R-TN) is introducing a resolution in the Senate to reject the
cuts. House Armed Services Committee Chairman Duncan Hunter
(R-CA) says: “The [defense planning process] has become
budget-driven, and we can’t allow that to happen. The one thing
we don’t want to see -- and I talked to the White House about
this yesterday [Feb. 1] -- is a competition between end strength
and modernization.”
MOAA agrees with Chairman Hunter.
Congress must act to fund what the nation needs to win the war
on terror and to provide for homeland security -- a vital
National Guard mission -- and not cut our military forces to fit
under some arbitrary budget cap. Hunter also argues that the
nation should commit 4% of its gross domestic product (GDP) to
defense, up from today’s 3.8%, to free up enough resources for
military manpower as well as weapons.
In our view, the Army’s 77-brigade
capability should be the "floor," not the "ceiling".
With recruiting already in trouble and
a level of strain on the troops that has to raise concerns for
future retention, the Army has already pulled out virtually
every other available manpower stop -- paying ever-bigger
recruiting and retention bonuses, lowering enlistment standards,
and raising the maximum age for enlistment. And now they want
to cut planned force levels?
The National Guard has been the
country's savior in sustaining unprecedented combat operations,
and those members and families are feeling stresses as well.
And that's not their only vital mission. The call-up of more
than 50,000 Guard troops in the wake of Hurricane Katrina
wouldn't have been possible if the proposed force cuts had been
in effect.
Simply said, these budget-driven force
cuts fly in the face of reality. We applaud Chairman Hunter and
other congressional leaders for standing up to sustain the force
levels needed to protect the nation.
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At a TRICARE conference discussion
forum on Jan. 30, Republican and Democratic staff members from
the House and Senate Armed Services Committees told TRICARE
officials that they shouldn’t expect Congress to just roll over
and accept the Defense Department’s plan to impose significantly
higher TRICARE fees on military retirees.
While they agreed that rising costs are
a concern, several made it clear that many on the Hill don’t
share the Pentagon’s view that the answer is to stick retirees
with bigger bills.
The Senate staffers questioned the
Pentagon analysis and expressed doubt whether private sector
solutions (such as higher cost-shares) are the answer for the
military situation. They also indicated the Pentagon hasn’t won
any points by failing to brief the Committee about the plan and
the rationale behind it, and that Congress is already starting
to receive thousands of letters from upset retirees. There was
general agreement among all of the staffers on the panel that
military retirees are different from civilians because they earn
their benefit through a career of arduous sacrifice, including
wartime service.
House and Senate staffers also agreed
that more needs to be done to ensure there are enough providers
participating in TRICARE - both TRICARE Standard and TRICARE
Prime - to meet beneficiary needs.
We’re pleased and appreciative that
these key Committee staff members show a lot more sensitivity to
military beneficiary needs than the Pentagon has, and that the
fee hike plan is going to get an intense going-over when it
arrives on Capitol Hill (which could be as soon as Feb. 6).
In the meantime, it’s essential to keep
up a sustained barrage of grassroots inputs to Congress over the
next several months. MOAA members can help that cause by
signing, stamping and mailing the tear-out letters to the four
top Armed Services Committee leaders that are enclosed in the
February MOAA magazine (two at page 34 and two at page 50). You
can add important extra emphasis to your letters with a
hand-written “p.s.”
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In December, we reported that
Congress’s final budget savings package (S. 1932) struck a
compromise that repealed the 4.4% Medicare physician payment cut
scheduled for January 1, 2006, but froze 2006 Medicare and
TRICARE payment rates at 2005 level. However, the Senate made
some minor, last minute changes in unrelated parts of that bill
that required kicking the package back to the House for another
vote.
Unfortunately, the House had already
recessed, which meant the law couldn’t be changed until the
House came back in late January. During the congressional
recess, Medicare was required by law to implement the 4.4%
reduction in physician payment rates on Jan. 1.
The House reconvened on Jan 31 and
voted on the budget savings package on Feb. 1 passing it by a
slim margin.
Medicare will now automatically
reprocess all claims filed since Jan 1. Medicare will then pay
each doctor one check to make up the total difference for all
claims filed since Jan. 1.
Medicare has acknowledged that it could
take until July before all the claims have been reprocessed.
Doctors who chose to stop seeing Medicare beneficiaries because
of the temporary cut will be given a 45-day reenrollment period
to rejoin the program.
During this process, TRICARE continued
paying at the 2005 rates, on the assumption that the legislation
would be passed shortly after the House returned from its
year-end break.
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