Expect a Tricare fee hike
By Tom Philpott
The Pentagon-appointed Task Force on the Future of Military Health will endorse higher Tricare fees, deductibles and co-payments for under-65 retirees and their families in an interim report to Congress this week.
It also will back other key features of the Tricare "reform" package first proposed last year by the Department of Defense. These include:
The task force will propose that the higher Tricare fees and deductibles be set so that, when fully phased in, they are no more burdensome for retirees than fee levels set in 1996 when Tricare was launched.
The task force favors periodic adjustments to Tricare's catastrophic cap, the maximum amount of out-of-pocket expenses beneficiaries face in any given year. The present cap is $1,000 for active-duty families and $3,000 for other Tricare-eligible families. The original Defense Department plan would have left the caps unchanged.
Co-chaired by economist Gail R. Wilensky and Air Force Vice Chief of Staff Gen. John D.W. Corley, the 14-member task force outlined its interim recommendations Wednesday at a public meeting of the Defense Health Board.
The task force's interim recommendations fall into four areas, two of which directly would affect beneficiary cost shares: higher retail drug co-pays and higher Tricare fees. More details will be released in December.
The task force wants Tricare fees realigned for under-65 retirees so they are more "fair" to taxpayers yet still recognize retirees' "years of demanding service" to the nation, she said.
To soften the blow of higher fees and of indexing them to inflation, Wilensky said, Congress could consider a one-time increase in military retirement pay, if deemed appropriate. But Wilensky suggested it is past time to begin to reverse the ever-widening cost differential for healthcare paid by working-age military retirees versus other American workers.
Steve Strobridge, co-chairman of The Military Coalition, an umbrella group of service and veterans associations, urged the task force during the meeting's public comment period not to ignore factors that might have skewed the cost of military healthcare since 1996. For example, in measuring Defense Department cost growth compared to fee levels, he said, the task force should consider the downsizing and closing of many base hospitals and the cost today of sending military doctors to war. Because of those factors, he said, many more beneficiaries are compelled to get more costly care from Tricare civilian providers.
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