After years of lobbying by the Pentagon, health insurance fees for working-age military retirees jumped Oct. 1.
But the debate over who should shoulder soaring health-care costs for the military is back in the Senate, which takes up a proposal this week from Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz) to raise the fees for the system known as Tricare higher still.
About 586,000 retirees of working age are paying annual family premiums of $520, up from $460, and individual premiums of $260, up from $230. Pharmacy co-pays also rose between $2 and $3.
The higher fees for the program’s popular HMO are part of a Defense Department effort to slash personnel costs by billions of dollars. Premiums had not been changed in 17 years.
>snip
But McCain, the decorated war veteran and former prisoner of war, has proposed an amendment that would tie increases to the annual growth in health costs, estimated at 6 percent a year. The Pentagon agrees.
“As with other challenges we faced in this bill, we could have and should have done more,” McCain said on the Senate floor this month. “Military retirees and their families deserve the best possible care in return for a career of military service, and nothing less. But we cannot ignore the fact that health-care costs will undermine the combat capability and training and readiness of our military if we don’t begin to control the cost growth now.”
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/federal-eye/post/mccain-proposal-would-raise-tricare-fees/2011/03/23/gIQANGf69N_blog.html
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