washingtonscene
full Senate brought up the bill for action, generating a flurry of hundreds of pro- posed amendments. As this article was being written, the
Senate was in the process of tackling these amendments with the hope of finishing the defense bill in early December 2011. Amendments MOAA endorsed included:
Late update: Thanks to the thousands of MOAA members’ emails and phone calls, Sen. John McCain withdrew this amendment.
• Sen. Bill Nelson’s (D-Fla.) amendment to end the deduction of VA Dependency and Indemnity Compensation from military Survivor Benefit Plan annuities; • two amendments offered by Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) to ease com- pensation inequities for disabled retirees; • Sen. Barbara Boxer’s (D-Calif.) amend- ment urging the Pentagon to provide ser- vicemembers access to flexible spending accounts to pay out-of-pocket health care and dependent care expenses with pretax dollars, just as federal civilians and all cor- porate employees can; • Sen. Carl Levin’s (D-Mich.) amendment to authorize early retirement and other authorities to ease inequities during the coming force drawdown; and • Sen. Frank Lautenberg’s (D-N.J.) amendment to acknowledge in law that career servicemembers prepay extraor- dinary premiums for their health care through decades of service and sacrifice. MOAA was shocked and disappointed at an amendment offered by Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) that would backtrack on the position previously approved by the Senate Armed Services Committee that the percentage increase in TRICARE Prime enrollment fees should not exceed the percentage increase in retiree COLAs. McCain’s amendment would delete
that protection and tie future increases to a Pentagon-generated index of health care cost growth that would raise fees by an es- timated 6.5 percent a year. Over time, that increase would cost enrollees hundreds of dollars a year.
Doc Fix Deadline
Looms MOAA and the AMA push for a solution.
O
n Veterans Day 2011, MOAA and the AMA asked Congress to stop a 27-percent cut in Medicare/TRI-
CARE physician payments to protect health care access for seniors and military families. Congress had until Jan. 1 to pass a fix. TRICARE ties its physician payment
rates to Medicare, so the scheduled 27-percent cut would hurt the nearly 10 million military family members who rely on TRICARE for their health care needs. MOAA President Vice Adm. Norbert
R. Ryan Jr., USN-Ret., said, “Having just returned from visiting with our troops in Afghanistan earlier this month, I know the last thing our deployed servicemembers should have to worry about is whether their sick spouse or child will have a diffi- cult time getting the health care they need.” Physician payments under Medicare and TRICARE have been nearly frozen for a decade, leaving a 20-percent gap between payment updates and the cost of caring for seniors. A cut of 27 percent is the larg- est ever scheduled and would force many physicians to limit the number of TRICARE and Medicare patients in their practices.
Part B Surprise Premiums for 2012 are less
than expected. I
n late October, 2011, Medicare officials announced the new Part B premium rates for 2012 — and they
were significantly lower across the board than most people had expected. Large
*on the web: Find MOAA's current legislative alerts at
http://capwiz.com/moaa/home. 36 MILITARY OFFICER JANUARY 2012
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