The defense budget the Administration submitted to Congress on February 5 significantly upped the ante in the Pentagon's campaign to raise TRICARE fees. It assumes even bigger fee hikes for FY2008 than last year's budget submission assumed for FY2007.
Last year's budget proposed tripling TRICARE Prime and TRICARE Standard fees for retired officers and their family members and survivors over a two-year period, and more than doubling them for most enlisted retirees. It also would have increased retail pharmacy fees for all TRICARE beneficiaries of all ages by almost 70%. View a summary of last year's proposal.
The Administration projected that those fee hikes would save the Pentagon $735 million in FY2007 and $1.86 billion in FY2008, and cut last year's defense health budget by $735 million on the assumption that Congress would accept them.
MOAA and The Military Coalition argued that these dramatic fee hikes would be disproportional and inappropriate, and that the Defense Department had not aggressively pursued other available options to hold down health costs. View the MOAA brochure.
After receiving tens of thousands of tear-out letters, post cards from MOAA members (view photos), Congress agreed with us, barring the Pentagon from increasing fees in FY2007, pending review of alternative options.
This year, the Pentagon hasn't published any specific fee increase plan, indicating they are awaiting the results of a DoD-appointed Task Force on the Future of Military Health Care, which is supposed to provide interim recommendations on cost-sharing and pharmacy copays in May.
But that's disingenuous, because the budget submitted to Congress this week assumes $1.8 billion in savings from TRICARE fee increases. That's almost three times the savings assumed in the FY2007 budget -- and happens to be precisely the amount of savings associated with the second year of last year's fee hike plan. So the budget puts enormous pressure on the Task Force (all of whose members were appointed by the Secretary of Defense and half of whom work for the Secretary) to propose at least the same fee hikes the Pentagon pushed last year - and assumes that Congress will implement them all immediately, without any two-year phase-in.
In essence, the Administration has underfunded the defense health budget by presuming the task force's outcome, and has challenged Congress to either change the law to implement fee increases high enough to save $1.8 billion or to find another $1.8 billion from another source to make up for the underfunding.
MOAA thinks it's wrong to play this kind of budget "chicken" with the defense health program - especially in time of war.
We believe strongly that Congress should establish clear guidelines in law about the unique role of military retirement benefits, including health care, as the primary offset for the extraordinary demands and sacrifices inherent in a military career. We must recognize that military members and families who serve two or three decades under those conditions are making a substantial, in-kind pre-payment for those benefits. The cash deductibles, enrollment fees and copays that they pay in retirement are only a small portion of their very large personal contributions toward their benefits.
To help make this case, we ask every MOAA member to do three things:
- Please sign, stamp and mail the four tear-out letters in your February and March issue of Military Officer magazine. Similar tear-out letters last year helped turn the tide in Congress when Committee leaders stacked them on a witness table at a TRICARE hearing. We need even more participation this year, now that Congress is facing a far greater budget challenge.
- Use MOAA's Web site to urge your U.S. representative to cosponsor Rep. Chet Edwards' (D-TX) and Rep. Walter Jones' (R-NC) Military Retirees Health Care Protection Act (H.R. 579) as well as Senator Frank Lautenberg's (D-NJ) Military Health Care Protection Act (S. 604). View the language of this bill.
- Pass this message to all of your TRICARE-eligible friends and urge them to send the message in paragraph b above.