Panel declines TRICARE fee hikes

The House Armed Services Committee has voted to raise drug co-payments for TRICARE beneficiaries who have brand-name prescriptions filled at retail pharmacies or through the TRICARE mail order program.

The committee also voted to help control Department of Defense drug costs by requiring beneficiaries who are eligible for TRICARE for Life, most of them elderly, to reorder all maintenance drugs through the TRICARE mail order plan for at least a year, after which they could opt out.

The committee's defense bill also would cap annual increases for retail and mail order drug co-payments to the percentage increase in cost-of-living adjustments for military retirees, thus ignoring the Obama administration's plan to adjust TRICARE fees and co-pays to keep pace with medical inflation.

As expected, the House committee declined to embrace most of the hefty TRICARE fee increases proposed by the administration. Panel members weren't keen even to debate the TRICARE changes they were compelled to approve under lowered defense ceilings set by last year's Budget Control Act.

The committee marked up its fiscal 2013 defense authorization bill (HR 4310) from 10 a.m. Wednesday to 2:30 a.m. Thursday, debating and voting on amendment after amendment. But no committee member, Republican or Democrat, challenged the planned increases in pharmacy co-pays or the provision to force elderly beneficiaries to get drugs for chronic conditions refilled by mail order.

This is an election year and those are sensitive matters. They weren't even part of the military personnel subcommittee's mark last week.

They were unveiled Monday in the "chairman's mark" with details present in a fact sheet that criticized the "dramatic" TRICARE increases proposed by the administration and the committee's "a different approach" for "ensuring fiscal responsibility while protecting the benefits earned by those who risk their lives to defend our nation."

In his opening statement on final mark-up, Rep. Howard P. "Buck" McKeon (R-Calif.), committee chairman, said the $554 billion national defense bill for next year, plus another $88 billion for ongoing contingencies operations, was almost $4 billion more than the president requested.

He also conceded the House plan took "only an incremental step to address the military's $46 billion decrease when considering where the President estimated national defense (spending) would be for fiscal year 2013 in last year's budget."

But, McKeon added, it will "protect the sacred covenant between our government and our all-volunteer military, keeping the promises we made to provide for the health and well being of our troops and their families."

The full House will vote on the bill soon. The Senate Armed Services Committee will mark up its version of the defense bill in late May, and is expected to back more of the administration's TRICARE fee increases. Differences between the House and Senate bills then would have to be negotiated by a House-Senate conference committee later this year.

Tom Philpott can be contacted at Military Update, P.O. Box 231111, Centreville, Va. 20120-1111, or by e-mail at:

[email protected]