House votes to exempt TRICARE from health reform bill

[The Straight Story]

House votes to exempt TRICARE from health reform bill
By Katherine McIntire Peters [e-mail] March 21, 2010

House lawmakers over the weekend voted to protect TRICARE and Defense non-appropriated fund health care beneficiaries from unintended consequences of national health reform.

The exemption (H.R. 4887) applies to the health care coverage provided by the Defense Department to military service members, retirees and their families. It clarifies the tax code to stipulate that coverage provided by Defense is treated as minimal essential coverage, ensuring that service members and their families will not need to purchase additional coverage to meet new health insurance requirements.

The legislation was introduced late Friday by Rep. Ike Skelton, D-Mo., chairman of the House Armed Services Committee. The full House approved it by a vote of 403-0 on Saturday afternoon.


Skelton opposed the health reform bill and planned to vote against it Sunday. In a floor speech Saturday, he acknowledged that the bill under consideration in Congress was unlikely to have any negative effect on military personnel or their dependents.

"However, to reassure our military service members and their families and make it perfectly clear that they will not be negatively affected by this legislation, my bill, H.R. 4887, explicitly states in law that these health plans meet the minimum requirements for individual health insurance."

http://www.govexec.com/story_page.cfm?articleid=44847&oref=todaysnews

[2Design]

1. and why can't we have what they have - sorry they get a lot of benefits

and high retirement pay and hospitals outside the system, and elective surgery, plastic surgery, and other things and we are getting so little.

[nadinbrzezinski]

2. I got tricare and there is no elecrive surgery anywhere

in the program, and plastic surgery is only allowed IF YOU NEED IT, aka if you busted your face in a car wreck and need to do some RECONSTRUCTIVE surgery.

That said, I told my reps over and over again that this was exactly what the country needed, TRICARE for all.

Oh and before you scream about it, some surgery that you may think is elective, like LASIK surgery, is done for the needs of the service for people who otherwise would not qualify as Pilots, but otherwise are gifted. So the surgery is done on mostly CADETS that now can fly planes or Special Forces types who need that for WORK.

But I am sure you knew that.

Now let me repeat myself, as far as I am concerned, TRICARE should be the MINIMUM of care for every US Citizen, but that means SINGLE PLAYER and that is what you and I should work towards.