House plan backs higher military health care fees

Deficit worries overcome years of reluctance

May 09, 2011|By Donna Cassata, Associated Press

WASHINGTON — After years of resisting proposed increases for military men and women, budget-conscious lawmakers are suddenly poised to make them pay a bit more for their health care, though not on the terms proposed by President Obama.

The costs of the program that provides health coverage to some 10 million active duty personnel, retirees, reservists, and their families have jumped from $19 billion in 2001 to $53 billion in the Pentagon’s latest budget request.

As part of his budget-cutting package, Obama has proposed increasing the fees for working-age retirees in the decades-old health program, known as TRICARE.

The current fees, unchanged in 11 years, are $230 a year for an individual and $460 for a family. That is far less than what civilian federal workers pay for health care, about $5,000 a year, and what most other Americans pay.

Obama is seeking a fee increase of $2.50 per month for an individual and $5 per month for families. Future increases starting in 2013 would be pegged to rising costs as measured by the national health care expenditure index produced by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, which projects 6.2 percent growth.

“Health care is eating the department alive,’’ Defense Secretary Robert Gates said two years ago.

The explosive expense of health care rivals what the Pentagon shells out to buy fighter aircraft, submarines, and high-tech weapons, and is about half of the $118 billion that the Obama administration wants in the next budget to fight the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Representative Howard “Buck’’ McKeon, chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, backs Gates’s proposal to raise fees for working-age retirees in the next budget, and he has the support of the committee’s top Democrat, Representative Adam Smith of Washington state.

But McKeon, a Republican from California, rejects the plan to link increases in 2013 and beyond to the health care expenditure index. He wants to tie any future increases to military retirees’ cost-of-living adjustment, which this year was zero.

McKeon planned to release his version of the defense bill today. The legislation says members of the military face “unique and extraordinary demands and make extra sacrifices over the course of a 20- to 30-year career in protecting freedom for all Americans. Decades of sacrifices is a significant prepaid premium for health care that is over and above what the member pays in money.’’

The full committee meets Wednesday to pull together an overall defense bill for the budget year beginning Oct. 1. The committee is expected to override members of its personnel subcommittee who last week unanimously approved a one-year prohibition on any increase in health care fees.