Battle heats up again over Tricare fee hikes - Marine Corps News | News from Afghanistan & Iraq - Marine Corps Times

Battle heats up again over Tricare fee hikes

The war over retiree health care costs is underway even before it is clear what the Pentagon may be proposing in its 2012 budget plan.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates announced Thursday that a $154 billion savings initiative will include $7 billion shaved from the Tricare health insurance program over five years from restructuring medical departments, finding ways to limit cost growth and “modest increases to Tricare fees” for working-age retirees under age 65.

Details on exactly what is involved are not expected until the Obama administration releases the 2012 federal budget, planned for mid-February.

While Gates offered no more details, the $7 billion savings goal was big enough to concern major military associations.

“We don’t know what he considers to be modest, but in 2007 the Defense Department proposed a two-year phase-in of higher Tricare fees that would have doubled and even tripled out-of-pocket costs,” said Steve Strobridge, government relations director for the Military Officers Association of America. “That plan would have saved $735 million the first year and $1.9 billion the second year, so the five-year savings are about same as now proposed.

“Anything that saves $1 billion a year or more doesn’t seem modest to us,” said Strobridge, a retired Air Force colonel.

Tricare fees cannot be changed without congressional approval, but revisions to budgeting rules in the House of Representatives could make it difficult for Congress to block premium hikes if they are included in the 2012 defense budget.

Under new rules invoked by Republicans as they took control of the House, lawmakers trying to prevent the Tricare increases would be prohibited from simply adjusting the defense budget to offset the lost savings; they would have to identify cuts in other federal entitlements to cover the additional expense.

Mark Olanoff, a retired Air Force chief master sergeant who is national president of the Armed Forces Top Enlisted Association, said proposing health care premium increases on military retirees and their families ignores the fact that lifetime health care is a benefit earned by 20 years or more of sacrifices.

“As the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have shown, military service is not a civilian job, not a 9-to-5 job in a typical office setting,” Olanoff said. “Military personnel and their families are subjected to numerous tours of moving, unaccompanied duty and many assignments that most of the civilian population would never agree to serve in. Only police, fire and EMTs are close to being exposed to what is similar to military service.”

Gates said during his Pentagon news conference that Tricare premiums have remained at $460 a year since 1995. “During this time, insurance premiums paid by the private sector and other government workers have risen dramatically. For example, the fees for a comparable health insurance program for federal workers costs roughly $5,000 a year,” Gates said.

Strobridge called that comparison “completely bogus.”

“We have spent generations telling military people that if they spend a career [in uniform], they will be entitled to lifetime health care. To them, that means they are going to get the health care they are getting now, not some future health care that costs them more,” Strobridge said.

“If you think about who is going to be affected by the premium increases, we are talking about people who spent five tours in Iraq. We are talking about wounded veterans forced to medically retire.”

Strobridge said the concept of making working-age retirees pay more for health care carries an underlying message of discouraging retirees who find post-service jobs from using a the military health care benefit they earned through their service.

“Someone who served 20 or 30 years is not some kind if miscreant if they use military health benefits,” Strobridge said. “But the message in a plan that charges higher premiums for younger retiree is that if you have a second job that offers health care — no matter what it is — you ought to be taking that rather than using your military benefits.”

The new proposal for Tricare fee increases is no surprise. The Defense Department has been trying for years to get Congress to approve fee hikes, but lawmakers have steadfastly resisted.

Over the past year Gates and other senior military leaders have been making a stronger case that rising health care costs are squeezing other programs out of the defense budget. Gates has said those costs are “eating us alive.”

“They have been telegraphing this punch for months,” Strobridge said.