Lawmakers seeking guidance from military associations on whether to support the new Defense Department plan to increase Tricare Prime enrollment fees modestly for working-age retirees next year, and then to adjust them annually for inflation, will get mixed signals this time around.
Joyce Wes
sel Raezer, national director of the National Military Family Association, is not alone in calling the fee increases of $60 a year for under-age-65 retiree families and $30 for individual coverage “amazingly reasonable.”
She noted that the higher fees would affect only the managed care program and the “most vulnerable” users — those medically retired and surviving spouses — still would see no increase. No increases are sought for the Tricare Standard, the traditional fee-for-service benefit, or for Tricare for Life, the prized supplement to Medicare available for elderly retirees.
Tricare fees haven’t increased since 1995. Assuming increases are inevitable at some point, Raezer said, accepting these “surprisingly small” increases now, when the military is so deeply appreciated, is better than waiting until lawmakers come “looking for a peace dividend.”
But other associations remain committed to blocking any Tricare fee increase. Retired Army Major Gen. William Matz, president of the National Association for Uniformed Services, argues that the proposed hikes will be the first of many. He said Robert Hale, under secretary of Defense, hinted as much last week when asked why the proposed fees are so small.
Congress, Hale said, has turned down “flat” more ambitious increases. “We are hopeful that, by starting slowly and [with] modest proposals, we will get their agreement,” Hale said.
“I will admit, sir, it is a modest increase,” said Matz. “But you must look through it, around it, above and into it. This is a nose under the tent.”
Major veterans service organizations, including American Legion and Veterans of Foreign Wars, also oppose any fee increase. National Commander Jimmie Foster said the Legion is “proud of the fact that Tricare fees have never been raised in the 15-year history of the program.”
But some of the most popular organizations representing military retirees, all of which lobbied hard against past Tricare fee increases, say they are “encouraged” by the new proposal and by what they perceive as a changed tone from senior Defense officials.
“Our belief is that if you keep putting your head in the sand and say ‘No fee increases ever,’ you take yourself out of the equation. People stop listening to you and eventually, given the deficit tide the country is facing, the budget change washes over you,” said Steve Strobridge, director of government relations for Military Officers Association of America.
The association, he said, “has never taken the position that there should never be a single dollar increase in health care fees. What we have always said is there needs to be a reasonable process” for setting and adjusting fees.
Absent such a process, Strobridge said, the Department of Defense went “for more than a decade not proposing any fee increases, which makes people believe there is never going to be any. And then, all of a sudden, a new defense secretary comes in and proposes tripling or quadrupling them. To us that was unacceptable.”
Defense officials, he said, finally seem to embrace arguments that their earlier plans for Tricare fees were unreasonable and failed to take into account that retirees have paid much of their cost for a promised lifetime health care benefit “up front” through unique hardships of military careers.
Under the new plan, working-age retirees would see Tricare Prime enrollment fees climb by 13 percent — from $460 to $520 for families and from $230 to $260 for individual coverage. After 15 years, and with surviving spouses and medically retired members unaffected, Strobridge said, “it is hard to make the argument that that’s unaffordable.”
To comment, send e-mail to milupdate@aol.com or write to Military Update, P.O. Box 231111, Centreville, VA, 20120-1111.
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