October 30, 2009
Congress Approves MOAA Federal Charter On Oct. 27, the U.S. House of Representatives approved legislation granting a federal charter to MOAA. The Senate passed an identical bill on September 24th. The bill will now go to the President for signature.
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| Some Overseas Retirees Face US Postal Cutoff The State Department has told DoD it will cease offering US postal service at US embassies and consulates to military retirees and DoD contract employees living overseas as of December 31. |
| GAO Upholds TRICARE Contract Appeal The GAO ruled this week that the Defense Department failed to follow the rules in awarding the new TRICARE contract for the South region (currently held by Humana Military Healthcare Services) to UnitedHealth Military & Veterans Services. |
| Symposium Highlights Guard/Reserve Needs A MOAA-hosted panel of Guard/Reserve leaders and private sector employers offered ideas on how to incentivize employers to continue to hire and retain Selected Reserve members despite their increased pace of deployments. |
| Spouse Panel Talks Families MOAA’s Oct. 24 Military Spouse Symposium featured a panel discussion among six currently serving military spouses about the challenges and pressures military families are dealing with in the current high-deployment environment. |
| Widows Win SBP Lawsuit The Pentagon announced this week that it will not appeal a recent U.S. Appeals Court ruling that certain military widows are eligible to receive full payment of both VA Dependency and Indemnity Compensation (DIC) and their military Survivor Benefit Plan (SBP) annuities. |
| DoD/VA Summit Focuses on Unseen Injuries MOAA participated in a mental health summit this week hosted by Defense Secretary Gates and VA Secretary Shinseki to assess additional options to meet the needs of members and families affected by traumatic brain injury, PTSD, and depression. |
Congress Approves MOAA Federal Charter
On Oct. 27, the U.S. House of Representatives approved legislation granting a federal charter to MOAA. The Senate passed an identical bill on September 24th. The bill will now go to the President for signature.
The Charter provides federal recognition of MOAA’s service mission and ensures that MOAA leaders in all states can serve on state-level veterans’ advisory panels.
MOAA’s press release thanks our legislative champions and others whose efforts were instrumental in achieving this important milestone.
Some Overseas Retirees Face US Postal Cutoff
The State Department has told DoD it will cease offering US postal service at US embassies and consulates to military retirees and DoD contract employees living overseas as of December 31.
This won’t affect overseas retirees who use post office boxes at US military installations.
Notices are being sent to the affected retirees.
GAO Upholds TRICARE Contract Appeal
TRICARE South Region contractor Humana Military Healthcare Services and the Government Accountability Office (GAO) are reporting that the GAO has upheld Humana’s protest of the Defense Department’s award of the new South Region contract to UnitedHealth Military & Veterans Services. The current contract, covering 3 million beneficiaries, is set to expire as of March 31, 2010.
Details of the GAO determination have not yet been made public, but its upholding of the protest indicates the initial contract award to UnitedHealth didn’t comply with laws and regulations governing the award.
The obvious question for the South Region beneficiaries is, “What happens now?” We won’t know that until GAO releases its full report. It’s possible that GAO will recommend reopening the contract bid. In rare cases, it could recommend outright award of the contract to a losing bidder. The decision raises the prospect that the current Humana contract might be extended pending any possible contract rebid process.
GAO can only recommend action, but DoD failure to comply with a GAO recommendation on such a high-profile contract would certainly invite congressional scrutiny.
The GAO also is expected to issue a decision soon on Health Net Federal Services’ protest of the Pentagon’s award of the TRICARE North Region contract to Aetna, Inc. While the two protests are completely independent, the upholding of one of them at least raises some uncertainty whether the other might be upheld. More to come.
Symposium Highlights Guard/Reserve Needs
On Oct. 24, MOAA hosted a professional symposium in San Diego entitled, “Helping the Home Team: Guard/Reserve Warriors, Families and Employers.”
General Craig McKinley, USAF, the first four-star Chief of the National Guard Bureau kicked off the symposium saying, “We’re in uncharted territory. We’ve never had a war extend for 8-plus years under the all-volunteer force. I don’t see the operations tempo decreasing…The most pressing national security challenge is our economy – trying to balance military needs at home and abroad with a staggering budget deficit.” He expects the defense budget will be flat for FY2011 and 2012.
“Since 9/11, many Guard/Reserve members have put their civilian careers on hold…Their return to a civilian career could be tough…[the strong support of] State governors and Adjutants General for Yellow Ribbon programs will be key [in that process],” McKinley said. “The resiliency of our fighting force is amazing…[and] they feel the love of Americans…Please watch to ensure that regardless of political decisions, we continue to support our people in uniform.”
A panel of government leaders and Guard/Reserve employers highlighted challenges for troops and employers alike.
David McGinnis, Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Reserve Affairs, said, “The business community has both a challenge and an opportunity… Guard/Reserve members are assets to their employers.” He also urged a community-based care system to address needs of returning warriors with psychological wounds. “A lot of the depression happens after they return and their civilian job doesn’t suit their new view of themselves.”
San Diego mayor Jerry Sanders, a former police chief, said “The military is our major recruiting focus, especially the police…military people have skills, experience and strength of character that help us.”
BGEN Daniel Nelan, Assistant Adjutant General (Army) of the California National Guard, noted that the slow economy is putting many Guard/Reserve members out of work. He offered several specific ways to incentivize employers to hire and retain drilling Reserve and Guard members, including exempting Social Security earnings penalties for retired employees rehired as temporary replacements for deployed personnel and letting employers pay Guard/Reserve members’ TRICARE Reserve Select premiums in lieu of company health plans to reduce employer health costs.
BGEN Gary Profit, USAR-Ret., Senior Director of Military Recruiting for Wal-Mart, noted that “public and private employers have always subsidized national security by employing Guard and Reserve members…I don’t think we really understand what moving to an ‘operational reserve’ really means, or that we’ve even asked the right questions yet…We need to begin a new dialogue [between DoD and employers] on how we’re going to generate force in the future…including what the role is of the [office of] Employer Support of the Guard and Reserve.”
Eric Basu, CEO of Sentek Global, Inc. of San Diego, a 13-year Navy veteran, said “In a small company, every employee has a key role…when one deploys for a year, someone has to fill that job or it goes away. Small companies don’t have the luxury of creating a job for a returnee [especially after a multi-year absence]…We need loan and grant programs to get returnees back up to speed…I’d suggest preference on government contracts based on the percentage of returning veterans a company employs.”
Spouse Panel Talks Families
Six currently serving military spouses engaged in a lively panel discussion at MOAA’s Military Spouse Symposium in San Diego on Oct. 24.
Bill Keller, an Air Force retiree and spouse of an Air Force officer, noted that male spouses are becoming more common, because a higher share of female servicemembers are staying for a career. One challenge, he said, is that military families often live long distances from the military installation and don’t feel as connected. “As a result, we’re trying to help by focusing on one family at a time.”
Marianne Sernoffsky is the family programs coordinator at Camp Rochester, the pilot for a new Reserve program that establishes military support offices in areas with significant Reserve populations but no military installation. “Our community center supports not only ID card holders,” she said, “but also parents, siblings and friends of members of all services and components, including veterans and retirees.”
Josi Hunt, a Navy spouse, said more and more married sailors are joining the Navy, and Navy families are adjusting to a new reality under which thousands of Navy personnel are assigned as individual augmentees with ground combat units in Iraq and Afghanistan. “We do six-month sea rotations very well,” she said, “but Navy families aren’t used to 12-to15 month deployments.”
Tanya Queiro, a Marine spouse recently selected as Military Spouse of the Year, is a wounded warrior recovery care coordinator. She articulated the unique challenges faced by family members who must become caregivers for the severely wounded. “Many family members give up their jobs and careers to be caregivers. Some of them have to take the lead and be ‘the strong ones’ for their families, and that can pose its own stresses for them and their wounded servicemembers.”
Kristy Kaufmann, the spouse of an Army officer coming off a command tour, said, “We need more open, honest dialogue, because things are not going well for families and kids. Many feel isolated from the rest of the community [especially after multiple deployments]…We need to change the 1950s Family Readiness Group model that depends on spouse volunteers and add more resources for support programs…Too often, the ‘can do’ attitude means ‘can do without.’”
Zoe Trautman, a Marine spouse, said the Marines are experiencing a “baby boom”, and that for the first time, the number of family members matches the number of Marines. She asserted the need “to put family programs on a wartime footing…we have problems reaching family members assigned to isolated and remote commands…we need a community-based engagement.” She said it’s essential to use “the new media” to reach younger spouses, and urged MOAA chapter leaders to reach out to recovery care coordinators, who need mentors for the wounded and their families. She also urged orientation efforts for military kids’ public school teachers, many of whom “know nothing about the military” or the stresses they may be under due to repeated deployments.
Widows Win SBP Lawsuit
On October 22, the Defense Department announced it will not appeal the August 2009 ruling of the U.S. Court of Appeals in the case of three widows who sued the government to keep both their VA survivor benefits and their military Survivor Benefit Plan annuities. At issue is a 2004 law that restored DIC payments to veterans' surviving spouses who remarry after their 57th birthday. Before the law change, survivors lost DIC upon remarriage at any age.
In July 2007, three widows filed a lawsuit claiming that the unique wording of the 2004 law entitled widows who remarry after age 57 to receive both Survivor Benefit Plan (SBP) annuities from DoD and VA Dependency and Indemnity Compensation (DIC), without any offset between the two.
Defense Department lawyers argued that was a flawed interpretation, arguing that the 2004 law’s language barring offset for any other “veteran’s benefit” didn’t apply to SBP, because SBP is a DoD benefit, not a VA benefit. After the U.S. Court of Federal Claims ruled in favor of the widows, the government filed an appeal.
But the U.S. Court of Appeals issued a strong rejection of the government’s appeal, and the Pentagon’s decision not to appeal the case to the U.S. Supreme Court ends the discussion.
The Defense Department has issued guidance to the services and Defense Finance and Accounting Service to identify all SBP annuitants who are eligible for DIC and who remarried after their 57th birthday. Qualifying survivors will be eligible to receive both payments in full, retroactive to January 1, 2004 or the date of their remarriage, whichever is later.
Payments will be reduced by the amount of any previous SBP premium refund and by the amount of any Special Survivor Indemnity Allowance payments the survivor may have received.
Although the number of survivors affected is relatively small, this decision gives us yet another equity argument to change the law for all remaining SBP-DIC widows. It simply doesn’t make sense to have two separate standards in the law, one that allows payment of full SBP and DIC for survivors who remarry after age 57 and another that forces a dollar-for-dollar offset between the two benefits for all others.
DoD/VA Summit Focuses on Unseen Injuries
SecDef Robert Gates and VA Secretary Eric Shinseki jointly opened this week’s joint DoD/VA Mental Health Summit to reinforce their commitment to eliminating the stigma associated with seeking mental health care and their commitment to building a true seamless transition between the two departments in caring for wounded and other disabled warriors and their families.
Secretary Gates said that troops injured in combat in Iraq and Afghanistan continue to face “frustrating, adversarial, and unnecessarily complex” bureaucratic hurdles. He said the two departments must do a better job of dealing with brain injuries and mental health ailments that are “widespread, entrenched and insidious.”
Secretary Shinseki noted that veterans are returning home with invisible wounds that are just as debilitating as physical traumas sustained on the battlefield. “Who’s vulnerable? Everyone,” he said. “Warriors suffer emotional injuries as much as they do physical ones.”
During the three-day summit, more than 100 experts representing a wide range of perspectives met for intense discussion. MOAA and several other military and veterans associations participated, and MOAA shared perspectives gained from our own recent wounded warrior symposium on challenges associated with PTSD, TBI, and depression.
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