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The Honolulu Advertiser
Posted on: Monday, May 23, 2005

MILITARY UPDATE
Bill would expand TRS access

By Tom Philpott

The House Armed Services Committee has voted 32-30 to open the new TRICARE Reserve Select, or TRS, healthcare program to any drilling reservist or National Guard member willing to pay the premiums, now set at $75 a month for member-only coverage or $233 for family coverage.

An unprecedented full-time health plan for reserve component members, if agreed to by the full House and later by the Senate, would cost $3.85 billion over five years. It would be paid withÊa portion of projected savings from the new round of base closings.

TRS, a scaled-down version of TRICARE Standard, the military's traditional fee-for-service insurance plan, accepted its first "select" enrollees on April 26. As enacted last year, TRS is open only to reservists who have been deactivated from post-9/11 deployments.

Reps. Gene Taylor, D-Miss., and Joe Wilson, R-S.C., primary sponsors of the amendment, persuaded a bipartisan group of colleagues to support opening TRS to any drilling reservist to recognize the nation's heavy reliance on Reserve and Guard members in Iraq and Afghanistan.

In an interview after the late-evening vote May 18, Taylor noted that reservists comprise 40 percent of ground forces in Iraq. Given their role fighting side-by-side with active-duty forces, they deserve at least some medical benefits they can count while in drill status. Taylor said he expects the Senate to agree to the House committee plan if not improve upon it.

Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., chairman of the Senate subcommittee on military personnel, had promised an amendment to open TRICARE Standard to all drilling reservists, in effect offering TRS without the premiums. An aide to Graham said he now believes premiums are necessary to keep any expansion ofÊreserve TRICARE affordable.

Taylor had argued that 18 percent of drilling reservists lack health insurance, which helps to explain why many were medically unfit when called up for the war in Iraq.

Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-Calif.), committee chairman, warned that many civilian employers of drilling reservists, on learning of an expanded reserve healthcare option, would tighten their own healthcare program for employees in drill status.

"We looked at this 30 ways to Sunday and didn't see how we could keep people from gaming the system, and piling enormous costs onto the federal government," Hunter warned.

Rep. John McHugh, R-N.Y., chairman of the military personnel subcommittee, agreed. If as many as 18 percent of drilling reservists have no health insurance, he said, 82 percent do. Their employers will be "very tempted to dump Guard and Reserve healthcare costs onto TRICARE." That kind of shift, he said, is under way with some state governments ordering state retirees to buy the Medicare pharmacy benefit when available in 2006.

Currently, TRS is only open to reserve component members who have returned after being mobilized under contingency orders of 30 days or longer and who served at least 90 days' continuous active service. For every 90 days served, they are eligible for a year of TRS coverage.

Write to Military Update, P.O. Box 231111, Centreville, VA, 20120-1111, milupdate@aol.com or visit www.militaryupdate.com.