Chet Edwards For Congress

March 15, 2006
Edwards behind plan to keep military retiree costs down

Waco Tribune Herald
By Dan Genz | Tribune-Herald staff writer

U.S. Rep. Chet Edwards, D-Waco, is part of a campaign seeking to stop the military from hiking health care fees on retired soldiers and officers for the first time in a dozen years.

Edwards and U.S. Rep. Walter Jones, R-N.C., will announce a new bill today that would block new fees in a medical system covering about 3 million retirees under age 65.

"This says to the administration on a bipartisan basis that the 2007 budget asks too much of military retirees," Edwards said. "The budget proposal is in effect a tax on military retirees. These are men and women who have served our country for at least 20 years."

Leaders within the Department of Defense hope to double or triple annual fees on some retirees by 2008 as they try to counter skyrocketing health care costs. The budget for the retiree health care program called Tricare has doubled from $19 billion in 2001 to $38 billion in 2006 and threatens to nearly double again by 2015 to $64 billion, officials say.

"We just laid out the facts," said Elder Granger, an Army brigadier general and deputy director of Tricare.

"We want to sustain the benefits and it's up to Congress to decide how they want to do that," he said. "We are trying to move in the right direction by partnering with patients and slightly increasing the enrollment fee in order to maintain this very rich Tricare benefit."

Tricare is the health plan for military service members and their families and military retirees. The proposed increases will affect only retirees under 65 who have spent at least 20 years in the military and choose to enroll in the health plan - currently, about 3 million beneficiaries.

Retirees currently pay 12 percent of the cost for their Tricare coverage, down from 27 percent in 1995, Granger said.

Edwards said the proposals will amount to $1,000 a year in new fees for retired officers and $450 for retired enlisted soldiers starting in 2008.

Lawmakers defeated recent proposed increases on Veterans Affairs health care programs in recent years, but these are the first proposals designed for Tricare.

Thirteen military organizations are supporting the Edwards-Jones legislation, Edwards said, including the American Legion.

"(We believe) strongly that career military personnel pay far greater premiums for their health care than any civilian, and pay them up front through arduous service," wrote Ret. Vice Adm. Norbert R. Ryan Jr., president of the Military Officers Association of America.