washingtonscene
MOAA’s COLA Prediction The consumer price index (CPI) jumped 0.7 percent in August. As of now, inflation is up 1.7 percent for the year. The 2013 COLA will be based on the CPI aver- age from July through September. MOAA estimates the 2013 COLA will be some- where between 1.2 and 1.7 percent.
A. $1.15 million B. $958,000 C. $756,000
5. What percentage of all military retirees are women? A. 1.7 percent B. 5.4 percent C. 7.3 percent
6. Most of the money paid out for TFL pa- tients goes for what kind of expenses? A. hospital stays B. doctor visits C. pharmacy costs
Defense Bill S
Delay Senate will take action after the election.
enate leaders now say they won’t bring the FY 2013 Defense Authori- zation Bill up for action until after
the Nov. 6 election. This adds one more massive task to the
lame-duck session of Congress squeezed between the November election and inau- guration in January. So far, those backed-up tasks include:
agreeing on an alternate debt-reduction plan to avoid sequestration and the “fiscal cliff” scheduled to take effect Jan. 1; avoiding a scheduled 27-percent cut in Medicare/TRICARE payments to doctors that would devastate access to care; and passing a defense authorization bill to sus- tain important pay needs and avoid massive TRICARE pharmacy copayment increases. MOAA is very concerned Congress is
cramming far too much work into a short and chaotic time. These issues have major implications for the military community and every other segment of America. Congress has had all year to work on them without success.
42 MILITARY OFFICER NOVEMBER 2012 Expecting legislators to come up
with reasonable solutions and necessary compromises in a couple of weeks at the end of the year after a particularly partisan election is an extraordinarily high-risk proposition.
Mental Health I
Targeted White House orders upgrades.
n response to alarming suicide trends and continuing difficulties among servicemembers and veterans and their families in accessing mental health services, President Barack Obama signed an executive order Aug. 31 aimed at addressing those problems. The order directs the VA to:
increase the capacity of its crisis hotline by 50 percent before the end of 2012; ensure any veteran identifying himself/ herself as being in crisis connects with a mental health professional or trained mental health worker within 24 hours or less; establish at least 15 pilot programs in locations where mental health access has been a problem, contracting with commu- nity facilities to reduce VA waiting lists; develop a plan to address mental health shortfalls in rural areas through such means as sharing mental health providers at locations where there’s not enough de- mand to support a full-time provider; hire 800 peer-to-peer support counsel- ors; and hire 1,600 new mental health profes- sionals before June 2013. On a broader scale, the executive order
establishes an interagency task force to de- velop additional strategies to improve men- tal health and substance abuse treatment services for DoD and VA beneficiaries.
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76 |
Page 77 |
Page 78 |
Page 79 |
Page 80 |
Page 81 |
Page 82 |
Page 83 |
Page 84 |
Page 85 |
Page 86 |
Page 87 |
Page 88 |
Page 89 |
Page 90 |
Page 91 |
Page 92 |
Page 93 |
Page 94 |
Page 95 |
Page 96 |
Page 97 |
Page 98 |
Page 99 |
Page 100 |
Page 101 |
Page 102 |
Page 103 |
Page 104 |
Page 105 |
Page 106 |
Page 107 |
Page 108