Disabled vets could get Tricare for life

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Disabled vets could get Tricare for life
By Tom Philpotts, Special to Stars and Stripes
Pacific edition, Saturday, September 22, 2007

The Bush administration will ask Congress to provide lifetime Tricare coverage to any servicemember discharged as “unfit” due to service-related physical or mental health conditions, said Donna Shalala, co-chair of the President’s Commission on Care for America’s Returning Wounded Warriors.

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The Tricare proposal, if enacted into law, would open military health care to a wave of new beneficiaries, potentially as many as 9,000 to 10,000 newly disabled veterans each year plus families.

The Dole-Shalala commission report, released in July, said the Tricare change should apply only to servicemembers separated for combat-related disabilities. But White House officials, at the urging of Defense officials and service associations, have decided to ask Congress to extend lifetime Tricare coverage to all medically discharged veterans.

Shalala said the White House will propose that the Tricare expansion be applied retroactively to veterans medically separated since 2001. Shalala didn’t mention a specific retroactive date, but Congress two years ago made eligibility for traumatic injury insurance retroactive to Oct. 7, 2001, the day U.S. forces invaded Afghanistan and began the global war on terrorism.

Under current law, members are separated rather than retired if found unfit for duty because of conditions rated below 20 percent disabling. They receive a disability severance award rather than retired pay. Because they are not “retirees,” they and their families are ineligible for lifetime Tricare coverage. They can get VA health care, but family members cannot.

From 2000 to 2006, an average of 9,600 servicemembers a year were separated as medically unfit with disability ratings of 20 percent or less, according to statistics gathered by the Veterans’ Disability Benefits Commission, which is due to release its report on Oct. 3. Nearly nine of 10 disabled soldiers were separated rather than retired. Sixty-four percent of sailors with disabilities, 73 percent of disabled airmen and 82 percent of disabled Marines also were released with ratings of 20 percent or less.


Rest of article at: http://stripes.com/article.asp?section=104&article=48931