Vets fear benefits a target

WASHINGTON – The Pentagon hopes to reap billions of dollars to pay for ships, aircraft and other weapons by doubling or tripling health insurance premiums paid by military retirees and driving 600,000 of those pensioners out of the military medical system, a coalition of veterans organizations charges.

Groups representing more than 1 million military pensioners – those who served at least 20 years – are organizing a telephone and letter-writing campaign to block the idea if it surfaces in Congress or to persuade the Bush administration to abandon it.

The retirees say the proposal breaks faith with former service members and their families and risks alienating thousands of active duty troops who may see it as eroding benefits they expect in retirement.

Because promises of free or low-cost health care are part of the military’s recruiting effort, new fees could be an obstacle to recruiting, the veterans argue.

“They sort of pit us against the active duty force,” said Michael Barrett, a retired Navy commander living in Williamsburg.

A Defense Department spokeswoman did not confirm that fee increases are in the offing and insisted that any discussion would be “predecisional.”

Yet Steve Strobridge, government relations director of the Military Officers Association of America, one of the more active retiree lobbies, said the group learned of the plan from several independent sources, each of whom provided the same list of proposed increases.

The officers association, with 370,000 members, is one of several retiree groups circulating that list, which asserts that by 2009, the Pentagon wants to more than triple the annual premiums paid by retired officers younger than 65 for coverage under Tricare Prime, the military’s premier health insurance program.

That would raise those costs to $750 per year for individuals from today’s $230 and to $1,500 from $460 per year for families.

Tricare Prime premiums for retired enlisted members younger than 65 would roughly double during the same period, the retiree groups say, as would the deductibles charged both officer and enlisted retirees participating in Tricare Standard, a less-generous, fee-for-service program. For the first time, retirees would be charged an annual enrollment fee of as much as $300 for family coverage for Tricare Standard.

Veterans groups say the proposal includes increased co-pays for prescription drugs provided under Tricare for both active duty and retired troops. The charge would jump to $15 from $9 per prescription for brand-name drugs at retail pharmacies and to $10 from $9 for brand-name drugs from Tricare’s mail-order pharmacy.

Barrett said he can afford the increases, but after a 31-year career of extended deployments and – in the early years – low pay, “you would like to feel that you’re not going to see this sort of stuff happening.”

Defense Department officials have complained for years that skyrocketing health care costs, particularly for retirees, are cutting into money needed to equip today’s troops. The Pentagon’s medical expenses have doubled in the past five years and could reach $64 billion annually by 2015, according to Pentagon estimates.

At that level, health care would account for 12 cents of every dollar spent on defense, up from a nickel per dollar in 1995.

In a private meeting last week with retiree representatives, Dr. William Winkenwerder, the Defense Department’s top health official, apparently declined to be drawn into a discussion on specifics of the alleged Pentagon plan.

However, several retiree representatives who attended the meeting said Winkenwerder did not challenge reports that officials want retirees to pay a larger share of their health care costs. They expect the Bush administration to roll out a plan to accomplish that as part of its 2007 budget submission next month.

The retirees groups say the increases are intended to trim $32 billion from the Pentagon’s health costs by 2015. Most of the projected savings would come from the movement of an estimated 600,000 retirees from Tricare to health insurance plans obtained through civilian employers.

More than 1.9 million veterans draw monthly retirement checks from the military, according to Pentagon figures compiled in 2004.

Cindy Williams, a former Congressional Budget Office analyst now teaching at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said that because most service members retire while relatively young and take civilian jobs, they do not have to rely on the military for health insurance.

Thousands opt not to give up their military coverage, however, because Tricare’s relatively low fees encourage them to stay in the military system, Williams said.

“The government would really like to start shifting those costs back” to civilian firms, Williams said. Yet she was skeptical of suggestions that the higher Tricare fees being discussed would trigger an exodus from the military system.

“Even at the end, Tricare is going to be a lot better deal than people get in the private sector,” Williams said.