One good way to start off St. Patrick’s Day is to testify in Congress. EANGUS did just that. Our Executive Director, Frank Yoakum, was one of five on a panel of military service organizations to go behind closed doors and brief members of the Personnel Subcommittee of the House Armed Services Committee. It was the second time this month EANGUS has testified on Capitol Hill on your behalf.
Along with representatives from ROA, MOAA, NMFA, and AUSA, Frank was asked and responded to questions about DOD’s Fiscal 2017 Plan for Modernization of TRICARE, especially the impact on the reserve components.
What does DOD want to do? In the Fiscal 2017 budget, DOD proposed to change TRICARE Prime into TRICARE Choice, and TRICARE Standard into TRICARE Select. DOD wants to drive people to use military treatment facilities and not civilian doctors as much as possible, and to do this, they are proposing to significantly raise co-pays and other fees. (EANGUS opposes any fee increases that doesn’t come with an increase in the level of service and provider network). DOD also proposes almost doubling fees for working age retirees, instituting premiums for TRICARE Select—same as Standard—where there are no premiums; and instituting a means test for charging fees for TRICARE for Life. Means testing is where they charge an annual enrollment fee based on your gross retired income—the more your military retired income, the more you pay—over and above paying Medicare Part B premiums. In addition, DOD proposes to tie any future increases to the National Health Expenditures index, which rises about 5 percent per year—and not tying it to the same percentage as COLAs. And DOD plans to institute an open-season enrollment each year to sign up for health care that year—miss the open season and you don’t have health care that year. EANGUS opposes all of this.
We testified that changing the names and hiking the prices is all that DOD is doing, and we oppose it.
We testified that TRICARE for Life has endured enough changes, and asked them to leave it alone.
We testified that all Federal employees who are also reservists should be able to choose TRICARE Reserve Select, and we think it will save the government money—almost three-quarters of a billion dollars a year. The savings comes from the government paying their 72 percent based on the costs of TRICARE Reserve Select versus the government cost of Federal Employees Health Benefit Plan (FEHBP).
We testified that, for continuity of care for reserve component service members and their families, a menu of options should be made available. This may include allowing members and their families to enroll in the FEHBP or TRICARE Reserve Select, instead of their employers’ plan, so that if the member changes jobs, their health care doesn’t have to change. And we testified that we’d prefer the Office of Personnel Management continue to administer the FEHBP health plans if reservists are included and not allow DOD stand up a cloned system.
We recommended removing the requirement to get a referral to go to an urgent care clinic, and told them that survey data shows an 80 percent savings over going to a hospital emergency room for the same illness.
We recommended including active duty performed under 10 USC 12304b (Combatant Command planned missions) in pre-mobilization and post-mobilization (TAMP) health care, the same as other Title 10 active duty statuses.
The House Armed Services Committee plans to reform TRICARE this year, which might be a little aggressive, considering it is an election year and typically Congress tries to wrap up early so they can hit the campaign trail. We’ll keep you up to date on what they are doing.