washingtonscene
Coverage For Your 20-
Somethings
New bill would extend TRICARE coverage for children to age 26.
T
South Dakota and Utah Join Compact
■ South Dakota and Utah recently joined the effort to reduce school eligibility, enrollment, placement, and gradu- ation hassles for chil- dren of mobile military parents by signing the Interstate Compact on Educational Opportunity for Military Children.
he new health care reform
legislation will allow children to remain on a parent’s health care
coverage until age 26 — even if the child is married and/or living or employed else- where — provided the child doesn’t have access to other qualifying coverage. In April, bills were introduced in the
House and the Senate to allow continued TRICARE coverage for such children of military parents. It takes another law change because
the TRICARE law allows coverage only up to age 23 for dependent children en- rolled in college. MOAA sent letters to Rep. Martin
Heinrich (D-N.M.) and Sen. Mark Udall (D-Colo.) thanking them for introducing bills to extend TRICARE coverage (H.R. 4923 and S. 3201, respectively). The bills would allow the secretary
of defense to charge an appropriate pre- mium for the extended coverage, which remains to be determined. But it’s not going to happen overnight.
The Heinrich and Udall bills will be rolled into the FY 2011 Defense Authorization Bill, which won’t be finalized until Octo- ber or November. Then DoD will have to negotiate a change to TRICARE contracts. So it’s likely to be sometime in 2011 before the change takes effect for military parents. In the meantime, parents whose chil-
dren are about to age out of TRICARE eligibility can elect to participate in the Continued Health Care Benefit Program,
3 8 MI L I T A R Y O F F I C E R J U N E 2 0 1 0
which provides TRICARE Standard-type coverage for beneficiaries who lose eli- gibility for TRICARE, for a premium of about $930 a quarter.
21-Percent Cut Delayed
Temporarily
Congress must act again soon to preserve access to care.
O
n April 15, the Senate voted to defer a 21-percent payment cut to doctors until June 1. Many doctors
say the payment cut would cause them to stop seeing Medicare and military patients. Because June 1 is a month longer delay than the House proposed, House leaders greased another vote to approve the lon- ger delay, and the bill was rushed to Presi- dent Obama to sign into law that night. The cuts went into effect April 1, but
Medicare exercised its authority to hold claims for up to 10 business days, in antici- pation of Congress approving the delay. At press time, legislators were trying to
find a way to push back the cuts until the end of the year. Even if they succeed, they’ll have to go through a new drill next year to avoid a 25-percent cut in January 2011. The battles on this issue stem from
Congress’ inability to agree on how to pay for a $240 billion permanent fix. Many legislators insist it should be paid for by cutting other spending. But find- ing $240 billion in spending cuts that a majority of legislators would vote for is an equally daunting challenge.
MO
— Contributors are Col. Steve Strobridge, USAF- Ret., direc tor; Col. Mike Hayden, USAF-Ret.; Col. Bob Norton, USA-Ret.; Cmdr. René Campos, USN- Ret.; Capt. Kathy Beasley, USN-Ret.; Col. Phil Odom, USAF-Ret.; Joy Dunlap; Bret Shea; and Matt Mur- phy, MOAA’s Government Relations Department.
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