TREA Legislative Update for May 5, 2006

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TREA Legislative Update for May 5, 2006

NOTE: We have added letters for you to send to your Congressional Representatives for most of the bills that we are following on Capitol Hill. All of the bills listed under "Action Alert" at http://capwiz.com/trea/home/ have letters attached to them. Click on them, and enter your zip code, and you will find out if your Senator/Representative is a Co-Sponsor or a non-sponsor, and an appropriate letter is available for you to email or print out and send.

Congress is dealing with one emergency after another while going through their regular work, like mark-ups for FY07’s appropriation bills. This week the emergency is the immigration protests and gasoline prices.

The NDAA Mark-Up-This week, the House’s Armed Services Committee completed it’s mark-up for 2007. It included several things we desperately wanted. First and foremost it stops DoD’s proposed increases in TRICARE Prime and TRICARE Standard enrollment fees and deductibles for Retirees and their families under the age of 65 until at least December 31, 2007. This is very good news indeed. The Committee also reduced the co-pays for the TRICARE mail order pharmacy to $0 for both the Generic and the Brand name tiers for up to a 90 day supply. (The third tier remains the present $22 co-pay). At the same time they increased the TRICARE Retail pharmacy co-pays to $6 for the generic tier and $16 for the brand name tier, instead of the present $3 and $9 co-pays for up to a 30-day prescription.(Again the third tier remains $22). This is clearly meant to push beneficiaries to use the mail order plan. The mail order plan is much cheaper for DoD. We have very little detail on this proposal at this time (it was negotiated at the last minute). We will report more on this later as the details are known.

The Committee also voted to increase end strengths in the Army by 30,000 and the Marine’s by 7,000. This is the House Committee’s version. The Senate Committee will probably vote theirs out next week and the there will be floor votes and negotiations between both houses. We still have a very long way to go.

Flag Amendment-Yesterday the Senate’s Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution in executive session approved the Flag Amendment S.J. Res12, and sent it on to the full Judiciary Committee for a vote. The Subcommittee’s vote was 6 for and 3 against. Committee Chairman Spector and Sub-Committee Chairman Brownback, and Senators Feinstein, Coburn, Cornyn, Graham, voted for the Amendment while Senators Durbin, Feingold and Kennedy opposed the resolution. The next hurdle is the full Judiciary Committee. There are only 57 co-sponsors to Senator Orrin Hatch’s (R-UT) Resolution, which is nowhere close to the 67 needed to pass a Constitutional Amendment. Below is the present list of co-sponsors and those not co-sponsoring. If your Senators is not a co-sponsor, please call and ask them to support it. If they are co-sponsors please call and thank them.

FLAG PROTECTION AMENDMENT

SJ RES 12

CO-SPONSORS:

AL: Shelby (R)/Sessions (R)

AK: Stevens (R)/Murkowski (R)

AZ: McCain (R)/Kyl (R)

AR: Lincoln (D)

CA: Feinstein (D)

CO: Salazar (D)/Allard (R)

FL: Martinez (R)

GA: Chambliss (R)/Isakson (R)

ID: Craig (R)/Crapo (R)

IN: Lugar (R)

IA: Grassley (R)

KS: Brownback (R)/Roberts (R)

KY: Bunning (R)

LA: Vitter (R)

ME: Snowe (R)/Collins (R)

MN: Dayton (D)/Coleman (R)

MS: Cochran (R)/Lott (R)

MO: Bond (R)/Talent (R)

MT: Baucus (D)/Burns (R)

NE: Nelson (D)/Hagel (R)

NV: Ensign (R)

NH: Gregg (R)/Sununu (R)

NM: Domenici (R)

NC: Burr (R)/Dole (R)

OH: DeWine (R)/Voinovich (R)

OK: Inhofe (R)/Coburn (R)

PA: Spector (R)/Santorum (R)

SC: Graham (R)/DeMint (R)

SD: Johnson (D)/Thune (R)

TN: Frist (R)/Alexander (R)

TX: Hutchinson (R)/Cornyn (R)

UT: Hatch (R)

VA: Warner (R)/Allen (R)

WY: Thomas (R)/Enzi (R)

NON-CO-SPONSORS:

AR: Pryor (D)

CA: Boxer (D)

CT: Dodd (D)/Lieberman (D)

DE: Biden (D)/Carper (D)

FL: Nelson (D)

HI: Inouye (D)/Akaka (D)

IL: Durbin (D)/Obama (D)

IN: Bayh (D)

IA: Harkin (D)

KY: McConnell (R)

LA: Landreau (D)

MD: Sarbanes (D)/Mikulski (D)

MA: Kennedy (D)/Kerry (D)

MI: Levin (D)/Stabenow (D)

NV: Reid (D)

NJ: Lautenberg (D)/Menendez (D)/Corzine (D)

NM: Bingamon (D)

NY: Schumer (D)/Clinton (D)

ND: Conrad (D)/Dorgan (D)

OR: Wyden (D)/Smith (R)

RI: Reed (D)/Smith (R)

UT: Bennett (R)

VT: Leahy (D)/Jeffords (I)

WA: Murray (D)/Cantwell (D)

WV: Byrd (D)/Rockefeller (D)

WI: Kohl (D)/Feingold (D)

TRICARE Reserve Select-The big news for TRS is that the House’s Armed Services Appropriations Committee mark-up included creating, once again, a single tier where all eligibles would enroll in the 1st tier paying 28% of the costs. This change would take effect some time in 2008. Again, we have very little detail on this proposal, and will let you know more on this issue as well.

After months of disappointing numbers signing up, the number of enrollees has started to increase (but as you can see some members are also deciding to disenroll.)

As of Friday, April 28, 2006 the number of enrollees in this plan are as follows:

Step 1 – 43,115 entered agreements by member

Step 2 -22,660 executed agreements on DEERS

Step 3 – 9,847 Total plans

2,127 Total plans disenrolled

11,974 Total plans ever enrolled
3,278 member-only plans

632 member-only plans disenrolled

3,910 Total member-only ever enrolled
6,569 family plans

1,495 family plans disenrolled

8,064 Family plans ever enrolled
27,782 Total beneficiaries entered in DEERS

6,437 Total beneficiaries disenrolled.

34,219 Total beneficiaries ever enrolled.

CORRECTION-In last week’s Legislative Update I placed Ft. Whiteman in Colorado rather than in its home state of Missouri. Proves that you should not write when you are JET LAGGED. Thanks to Chief George Moses for catching this.

Also, Senator Blanche Lincoln (D) is from AR not AK.