Veteran Medical Benefits Petition [Archive] - Marine Corps Community for USMC Veterans

dscusmc

03-31-06, 05:20 PM

Thanks for the petition MSgt. I attached alot of information, because I know that is just about impossible to figure out how to find some of this stuff. I agree that its important to write your elected officials, especially if they are on the Armed Services Committees and Personnel Subcommittees. Hopefully, these links will shed some light on the legislative process and whats going on in the hearings.

I attached a link below to the Senate Armed Forces Committee website. March 14th, the committee heard testimony about health benefits and programs in review of the Defense Authorization Request for fiscal year 2007.

The link is attached below and contains the prepared statements from the March hearings. I would at least read LT GEN McCarthy's, USMC (Ret.) statement. He's the Executive Director of the Reserve Officers Association. His statement does a good job of helping the reader understand the issue.

They hearing will continue on April 4th. If you are interested in the issue, check the link.

Also attached is a link to the House Armed Services Committee website and a link to the Defense Advisory Committee on Military Compensation (DACMC).

I haven't been able to find the actual proposed legislation, if there is any, but most of the prepared statements for the hearings can fill you in on the DoD recommended changes.

Semper Fi!

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March 14th. http://armed-services.senate.gov/e_witnesslist.cfm?id=1798

March 27th - House Hearing Prepared Statement of the Honorable David Chu, UnderSecretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness: http://www.house.gov/hasc/schedules/3-29-06ChuWinkTestimony.pdf

House Committee - Scroll Down to March 29, 3:00 PM Military Personnel Subcommitte: http://www.house.gov/hasc/schedules/

April 4th: http://armed-services.senate.gov/e_witnesslist.cfm?id=1832

Defense Advisory Committee on Military Compensation: http://www.defenselink.mil/prhome/dacmc.html

dscusmc

04-01-06, 08:24 AM

OldMarine - I think the short answer is that Life members probably won't be affected. TRICARE Life doesn't require annual authorization from Congress, so I doubt they are talking about Life in hearings for the Defense Authorization Act for 2007.

My sense, is that DoD is trying to make the other TRICARE programs more competitive with the private sector. They are especially concerned with rising costs for members under 65 years old. At this point, DoD plans have a long way to go before becoming legislation, but it's definately something to follow.

Attached below is an excerpt from the statement of the UnderSecretary of Defense. He says of the, "proposed benefit changes, we believe that only the implementation of the annual TRICARE Extra/Standard enrollment fees and increased deductibles require legislation.

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Here's the rest of the statement from that section:

--An issue we must address is the rising costs of healthcare. Put directly, we need help from Congress to sustain our benefit over the long term. Our program has essentially doubled in size in the past five years, from about $19 Billion in 2001 to $38 Billion in 2006. Further, we estimate that our expenditures for healthcare could be $64 billion in 2015, approximately 12% of the Department’s budget. This rapid growth in cost clearly puts the sustainability of our health benefit at risk.

The facts show that the expansion of TRICARE, high health inflation, the reduction in beneficiary cost shares, and sharp increase of usage by our retirees under 65 is responsible for this growth. In 1995, beneficiaries paid 27% of total health costs; today they pay 12% of total health costs. We believe that it is absolutely essential to achieve a financial balance between the government and individual’s care contributions closer to when TRICARE was inaugurated 11 years ago.

Our plan to increase cost sharing would ask retirees under 65 to pay higher premiums and co-payments for healthcare coverage. These plans would have three tiers with increases for junior enlisted retirees substantially less than those for officers. Furthermore, after a two-year transition, beginning in FY 2009, these increases would be indexed to the average percentage increase in the Federal Employees Health Benefit Program premiums.
In addition, we propose to also change pharmacy co-payments, for all beneficiaries except active duty members, to encourage use of mail order and MTF pharmacy refills and generic products, when appropriate. We also ask
that Congress clarify to those who oppose the Department our legal authority to obtain federal pricing discounts for prescriptions obtained at retail pharmacies. To implement these changes to sustain our invaluable benefit, we need help from Congress.
We estimate that if our proposed changes are implemented the department will reduce costs a total of $735 million in FY07, and a total of $11.2 billion from FY 2007 – FY 2011. The total includes both premium/deductible changes and the pharmacy program adjustments.

We will have $249 million in expected cost reduction in FY 2007 from increasing deductibles and from instituting annual enrollment fees for TRICARE Extra and Standard and indexed to the annual rate of change in average premiums of the Federal Employee Health Benefits Program (FEHBP). Another $329 million is from increased annual enrollment fees for TRICARE Prime, also indexed to the annual rate of change in average premiums of the FEHBP..

There is $157 million in expected savings from the Pharmacy co-payment adjustments. Of these proposed benefit changes, we believe that only the implementation of the annual TRICARE Extra/Standard enrollment fees and increased deductibles require legislation.

In the ongoing discussions with the beneficiary organizations regarding our
recommendations to increase select cost-shares, they have voiced concern that our initial focus should first be on “internal efficiencies” that can be gained before measures are taken to increase cost-shares. They are correct that this should be the first step. And we have implemented a number of actions in the last several years designed to slow the health care cost increases. These cost saving initiatives have been very successful, and yet they are insufficient in addressing all of our cost drivers. We will detail these initiatives in this statement, and also discuss our additional recommendations to sustain quality and the overall health benefit while properly managing costs.

Our primary cost savings initiatives reduced defense health care costs by $419.1 million in 2002, and we target savings of $973.3 million in 2007. The key program initiatives that have led to these savings are:
1. the use of the federal supply schedule to lower pharmacy costs,
2. new private sector care TRICARE contracts that reduced administrative costs,
3. an increase in Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) and the Department of Defense
(DoD) sharing of facilities, capabilities, and joint procurements.
4. the implementation of business planning tools to help local military hospital and clinic commanders identify efficiencies and optimize their facilities, and
5. the introduction of new prime vendor agreements to lower costs of MTF medical and surgical supplies.

As we continue these cost reduction efforts, we have established annual saving targets of 3% -5% of our annual Operation and Maintenance budget.

March 27th - House Hearing Prepared Statement of the Honorable David Chu, UnderSecretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness: http://www.house.gov/hasc/schedules/...kTestimony.pdf