By late March, almost 220,000 reservists and National Guard members had been mobilized for war. All of them were left unarmed in one regard - income protection.

Reservists can't sign up for mobilization insurance because there is no program. Neither Congress nor the Clinton or Bush administrations can be proud of their performance on this important issue.

Reservists who are called to active duty to protect the nation sacrifice much. They put their lives on hold, spend long months away from their families, and expose themselves to military-unique operational dangers including, for many, combat. Because they have no mobilization insurance, many of them see their incomes fall sharply when military pay fails to match what they earn in civilian employment.

The lack of mobilization insurance can be financially devastating for small-business owners or self-employed professionals, including plumbers and electricians, physicians and dentists, and accountants and lawyers. In many cases, they still have business bills to pay, yet their income streams shrink during their deployment. Many business executives, or even mid-level managers, see incomes drop by tens of thousands of dollars, which strains family budgets as they struggle to pay mortgages, car payments, and education costs.

Even if Congress were to pass some type of mobilization insurance plan soon, as it must, it might not provide relief to reservists who already have been recalled. Lawmakers and defense officials still have bitter memories of a poorly designed mobilization insurance plan in 1996.

That plan's flaws help us understand what the next one might look like. From October through December 1996, reservists and National Guard members were offered a chance to sign up for mobilization insurance during a special "open season." The plan was to be self-sustaining, with premiums alone set high enough to cover anticipated payouts. A premium of $6.10 a month bought $500 a month in supplemental income during the period of mobilization; a monthly premium of $61 bought maximum coverage of $5,000.

Reservists didn't need to show how much they actually earned as civilians to qualify for payments. There also was no delay in coverage (no wait of six months, for example) before payments began.

Finally, enrollment was entirely voluntary. Those reservists with a low risk of deployment could ignore the plan while those likely to deploy had the opportunity to buy coverage.

The start of the program could not have been timed any worse from the perspective of plan managers. During the open season, thousands of reserve component members were mobilized or learned that they would be called up soon for Joint Endeavor, the Bosnian peacekeeping operation.

Within three months, 12,600 reservists had signed up for the insurance, many electing maximum coverage. More than a few began to enjoy a tremendous and immediate windfall from the plan. If deployed to Bosnia for a year, in return for total premiums of $732, reservists drew $60,000 in additional income. Suddenly, the plan that was to be self-sustaining was bankrupt. In 1997, Congress grudgingly approved a Pentagon supplemental funding request for $72 million to cover the plan's outstanding obligations. By November, with costs nearing $110 million, it was shut down.

Mismanagement and incredibly poor timing killed the program but left the need, as mobilized reservists today can attest. If the government's goal remains to create a self-sustaining insurance program, the next version likely will have an automatic coverage feature so all drilling reservists begin to see automatic premium deductions unless they elect to opt out, as active duty members can do with Servicemembers' Group Life Insurance coverage.

An automatic delay in payments after coverage begins also is a possibility, but that won't help reservists now mobilized.

It's time for the administration and Congress to get over the debacle of '96 and deliver a sound income insurance program to reservists protecting the nation. Otherwise, some of the best among our reserve components will decide the price of service is just too high.

Tom Philpott is a freelance writer and syndicated news columnist. His column, "Military Update," appears in 48 daily newspapers throughout the United States and overseas. His book, Glory Denied: The Saga of Jim Thompson, America's Longest-Held POW (W.W. Norton & Co., 2001), now is available in paperback (Plume, 2002).