Weapons at veterans' expense?
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Subject: Weapons at veterans' expense?
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Weapons at veterans' expense?
Some veterans groups
accuse the Pentagon of preparing to slice into health benefits in an effort to
funnel money to weapons.
T. ROBB
BROWN / ASSOCIATED PRESS
By DALE
EISMAN,
The Virginian-Pilot
January 18, 2006
WASHINGTON — The Pentagon hopes to reap billions of dollars to pay for ships,
aircraft and other weapons by doubling or tripling health insurance premiums
paid by military retirees and driving 600,000 of those pensioners out of the
military medical system, charges a coalition of veterans’ organizations.
Groups representing more than 1 million military pensioners – those who served
at least 20 years – are organizing a telephone and letter-writing campaign to
block the idea if it ever surfaces in Congress or to persuade the Bush
administration to abandon it. The retirees say the proposal breaks faith with
former service members and their families and risks alienating thousands of
active duty troops who may see it as eroding benefits they expect in retirement.
Because promises of free or low-cost health care are part of the military’s
recruiting effort, new fees could be an obstacle to recruiting, the veterans
argue.
“They sort of pit us against the active duty force,” said Michael Barrett, a
retired Navy commander living in Williamsburg. A Defense Department spokeswoman
did not confirm that fee increases are in the offing and insisted that any
discussion would be “predecisional.
”Yet Steve Strobridge, government relations director of the Military Officers
Association of America, one of the more active retiree lobbies, said the group
learned of the plan from several independent sources, each of whom provided the
same list of proposed increases.
The officers association, with 370,000 members, is one of several retiree groups
circulating that list, which asserts that by 2009, the Pentagon wants to more
than triple the annual premiums paid by retired officers younger than 65 for
coverage under Tricare Prime, the military’s premier health insurance program.
That would raise those costs to $750 per year for individuals from today’s $230
and to $1,500 from $460 per year for families. Tricare Prime premiums for
retired enlisted members younger than 65 would roughly double during the same
period, the retiree groups say, as would the deductibles charged both officer
and enlisted retirees participating in Tricare Standard, a less-generous,
fee-for-service program.
For the first time, retirees would be charged an annual enrollment fee of as
much as $300 for family coverage for Tricare Standard. Veterans groups say the
proposal includes increased co-pays for prescription drugs provided under
Tricare for both active duty and retired troops.
The charge would jump to $15 from $9 per prescription for brand-name drugs at
retail pharmacies and to $10 from $9 for brand-name drugs from Tricare’s
mail-order pharmacy. Barrett said he can afford the increases, b ut after a
31-year career of extended deployments and – in the early years – low pay, “you
would like to feel that you’re not going to see this sort of stuff happening.”
Defense Department officials have complained for years that skyrocketing health
care costs, particularly for retirees, are cutting into money needed to equip
today’s troops. The Pentagon’s medical expenses have doubled in the p ast five
years and could reach $64 billion annually by 2015, according to Pentagon
estimates.
At that level, health care would account for 12 cents of every dollar spent on
defense, up from a nickel per dollar in 1995.In a private meeting last week with
retiree representatives, Dr. William Winkenwerder, the Defense Department’s top
health official, apparently declined to be drawn into a discussion on specifics
of the alleged Pentagon plan.
However, several retiree representatives who attended the meeting said
Winkenwerder did not challenge reports that officials want retirees to pay a
larger share of their health care costs. They expect the Bush administration to
roll out a plan to accomplish that as part of its 2007 budget submission next
month.
The retirees groups say the increases are intended to trim $32 billion from the
Pentagon’s health costs by 2015. Most of the projected savings would come from
the movement of an estimated 600,000 retirees from Tricare to health insurance
plans obtained through civilian employers. More than 1.9 million veterans draw
monthly retirement checks from the military, according to Pentagon figures
compiled in 2004.
More than 134,000 of them live in Virginia; only Florida, California and Texas
have more. Cindy Williams, a former Congressional Budget Office analyst now
teaching at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said that because most
service members retire while relatively young and take civilian jobs, they do
not have to rely on the military for health insurance.
Thousands opt not to give up their military coverage, however, because Tricare’s
relatively low fees encourage them to stay in the military system, Williams
said. “The government would really like to start shifting those costs back” to
civilian firms, Williams said. Yet she was skeptical of suggestions that the
higher Tricare fees being discussed would trigger an exodus from the military
system.
“Even at the end, Tricare is going to be a lot better deal than people get in
the private sector,” Williams said. Several retiree advocates agreed. Although
they acknowledged that Tricare fees have not been adjusted since 1995, they
argued that comparisons between civilian and military health premiums ignore the
hardships that go with military life.“
A military career demands sacrifices that very few other Americans are willing
to put up with – and for 20 to 30 years,” said Strobridge . “Today’s retirees
made those sacrifices. Military retirees paid far more for their health care
than any civilian.” Strobridge and other retiree advocates also argue that the
Bush administration can hardly claim retiree benefits are unaffordable while it
continues to push for billions of dollars per year in tax cuts.
“The country can afford to pay for both weapons and military health care,” the
Military Officers Association of America asserted in a fact sheet e-mailed to
thousands of its members last week. In wartime, “today’s defense budget is less
than 4 percent of Gross Domestic Product, about half the peacetime-year average
since World War II,” the message said.
“There’s a great deal of concern in the retired community, and there’s also
resentment about the way the costs of health care have been portrayed, ” said
Joseph L. Barnes, executive secretary of the Fleet Reserve Association, a group
representing 110,000, Navy, Marine Corps and Coast Guard enlisted veterans.“
In the minds of our members, they question: W hat are the priorities?” he
asserted. The Pentagon’s move against health costs for retirees younger than 65
comes in the wake of a series of defeats of its effort to block benefit
increases for older military pensioners.
Tricare for Life, a Medicare-supplemental insurance plan launched in 2001 for
military retirees older than 65, cost the military $8 billion in 2005. Congress
has agreed to spend billions more to allow military pensioners with disabilities
to combine their retirement benefits with the monthly disability checks they get
from the Department of Veterans Affairs.
The success in securing such benefits has made the veterans and military
retirees lobby one of the most successful in Washington. L eaders of The
Military Coalition, an association of groups that works on veterans issues, say
they wi ll do all they can to block any Tricare fee increases.
“Our members are viewing this as a voting issue,” said James Lokovic, deputy
director for the 135,000-member Air Force Sergeants Association. He expects his
members will tell their elected officials that “if you don’t work to stop it,
you’re not getting my vote – period,” he said.
Discussion:
Debate military health benefits for veterans
http://home.hamptonroads.com/guestbook/guestbook.cfm?id=555
Reach Dale Eisman at (703)913-9872 or icemandc@msn.com
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Contributed,
YNCS Don Harribine, USN(ret)