[Vision2020] Care Cost Increases Force 'Hard Decisions'

[Tom Hansen]

>From the March 6, 2006 edition of the Army Times -

Support Senator Larry Craig and his fight against veteran health care budget
cuts.

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Care cost increases force 'hard decisions'
Senators back Bush plan to raise fees, drug prices

By Rick Maze
Times staff writer

In an early signal that the belt may tighten considerably on pay and
benefits in the 2007 budget cycle, two influential Senate Republicans are
warning veterans that there are limits to what the federal government can be
expected to provide.
Sens. Larry Craig, R-Idaho, chairman of the Senate Veterans' Affairs
Committee, and Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., chairman of the Senate Armed Services
personnel subcommittee, both endorsed steps by the Bush administration to
pass a greater share of government health care costs onto some patients.

In the Defense Department budget plan, the administration wants to raise
Tricare enrollment fees and co-payments for military retirees under age 65.
In the Department of Veterans Affairs budget, the Bush administration is
asking - for a fourth time - for Congress to approve enrollment fees and
raise prescription drug co-pays for veterans who have at least modest
incomes and no service-connected medical conditions.

"I find these proposals eminently reasonable," Craig said at a Feb. 16
hearing. "If the president's proposals are not accepted, then we are forced
to discuss options."

Graham said retirees and veterans will be asked to make more sacrifices. 

"The nation owes you a lot, but I would argue that your need to serve the
nation never stops," he said. "We are going to make some hard decisions."

Among the ideas Graham said he was willing to consider, along with higher
enrollment fees and co-pays, is shifting responsibility for retiree health
care from the Defense Department to VA so the cost of caring for retirees
does not compete with the cost of military equipment, readiness and
active-duty personnel.

Graham said he knows the idea is controversial. "I throw that out there to
wake everybody up," he said. "We need to think big here. We need to serve
people well, do away with duplication where possible, get the best bang for
the taxpayer dollar and serve people."

The alternative is to ask commanders down the road "to pick between bullets
and planes and ships and health care," he said. "We need to take that
pressure off the Department of Defense budget." 

Democrats have a different view. Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., worries that
increased health care fees and co-pays are "a step backward."

"We should not balance the budget on the backs of those who have served us,"
she said.

And Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., said he does not see Congress buying the fee
proposals.

"Congress has rejected three years in a row the proposal for a new [VA]
enrollment fee and the proposal to double prescription drug co-payments for
Priority 7 and 8 veterans," he said. "So three years in a row we've said no;
I can't imagine I'm going to say yes this year."

But Craig said spending must be reined in to avoid a budget crisis. 

"We cannot pretend the taxpayers' funding of programs that support our
nation's veterans exists in a vacuum. It simply does not," he said.

Craig predicted that veterans' programs "will collide with spending demands
from all other areas of the government. Just as future liabilities for
Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, if left unchanged, will crowd out
our limited resources, so too will VA spending," he said.

"If we duck it in '07, we will simply have it in our face in '08," Craig
said. "I look forward to a serious discussion about these and other
important issues" with other lawmakers, VA officials and veterans' groups.

Craig said he is starting to think no amount of increase in the VA budget
will satisfy everyone.

After the Bush administration proposed a 10.3 percent one-year boost, Craig
said he thought it "would unite Republicans, and Democrats, and, if not all,
most veterans' advocates" in support. 

"Boy, was I wrong," Craig said. "Since the budget numbers were released, I
have listened to, I have read various comments which instead suggest that
the president's request ignores the reality of the full costs of war, that
it breaks faith with veterans who have returned from the battlefield, and,
most remarkably, that this budget is somehow a cut in the care of our
veterans."

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Take care, Moscow.

Tom Hansen
Moscow, Idaho

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"Dissent is the highest form of patriotism"

- Thomas Jefferson

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