WASHINGTON, March 15 (UPI) -- A powerful Republican senator has vetoed the Pentagon's plan to boost health care co-pays and fees for military personnel.
The Department of Defense will have to go back to the drawing board on its hopes for hefty rises in the beneficiary costs of the military's health and pharmaceutical coverage, Sen. Lindsay graham, R-S.C. said Tuesday.
Graham, the powerful chairman of the Senate Armed Services Personnel Subcommittee, said after a two-hour hearing on the subject Tuesday, "There is no way a 115 percent increase in co-pays and enrollment fees [in the TRICARE health insurance program] is going to happen in the next two years."
The numbers Graham cited are what the military's top brass has said is required to put the program on a sounder financial footing, CongressDaily reported Wednesday.
Graham did not rule out the possibility that Congress might go along with some "small bump-ups" in the price of the popular coverage for both active-duty members and retirees and their families, CongressDaily said.
But he insisted that any steep increases were off the table until GAO or some other independent analyst studied the problem and made recommendations for curbing program costs.
Last year, according to the Pentagon, the cost of providing the coverage reached $38 billion. Four years ago, the program consumed about 4 percent of DOD's annual budget; last year that figure rose to 8 percent.
However, veterans' and retired military lobbies weighed in at the hearing, in some cases challenging the validity of the Pentagon's calculations and in all cases decrying the prospect of slapping such a stiff increase on military families, CongressDaily said.
