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  • February 17, 2010 11:00 AM
    Can you use your security deposit for your last month’s rent? No! Texas Property Code §92.108 states “a tenant may not...
  • February 9, 2010 3:56 PM
    Texas Veteran’s – Texas Veteran’s Mortgage Credit Program Texas Veteran’s seeking help buying and owning a home, just...
  • February 2, 2010 4:23 PM
    Stop Loss Payments available to Veterans "Stop-Lossed" between Sept 11, 2001 and Sept 30, 2009 If you or a deceased family member was prevented from...
  • January 22, 2010 4:23 PM
    Health Care Changes for Retired and Tricare Eligible Veterans? Option 96 Introduce Minimum Out-of-Pocket Requirements Under TRICARE For Life (MILLIONS OF DOLLARS) 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 Total 2010-2014 2010-2019 Change in Mandatory Spending Department of Defense Medicare 0 0 -2,000 -300 -3,000 -700 -3,300 -700 -3,500 -800 -11,800 -32,600 -2,500 -7,100 TRICARE For Life (TFL) was introduced in 2002 as a supplement to Medicare for military retirees and their family members who are eligible for Medicare. The pro-gram pays nearly all medical costs not covered by Medi-care and requires few out-of-pocket fees. Because the Department of Defense (DoD) is a passive payer in the program—it neither manages care nor provides incentives for the cost-conscious use of services—it has virtually no means of controlling the program’s costs. In 2008, DoD spent about $8 billion on TFL-eligible beneficiaries in addi-tion to amounts spent for those individuals by Medicare. This option would help reduce the costs of TFL, as well as costs for Medicare, by introducing minimum out-of-pocket requirements for beneficiaries. Under this option, TFL would not cover any of the first $525 of an enrollee’s cost-sharing liabilities for calendar year 2011 and would limit coverage to 50 percent of the next $4,725 in Medi-care cost sharing that the beneficiary incurred. (Because all further cost sharing would be covered by TFL, enroll-ees could not pay more than $2,888 in cost sharing in that year. Those dollar limits would be indexed to growth in average Medicare costs for later years.) The true out-of-pocket provisions in Medicare’s prescription drug pro-gram, or Part D, are an example of how this option could work in practice. Under that program, any amounts paid by Medicare or by any other insurer are not included when calculating whether a beneficiary has reached the level of eligibility for catastrophic coverage. Net Effect on the Deficit 0 -2,300 RELATED CBO PUBLICATIONS: Evaluating Military Compensation, June 2Issue Brief, January 16, 2004; and Growth in Medical Spending by the Currently, military treatment facilities (MTFs) do not charge eligible individuals copayments for medical ser-vices or pharmaceuticals. In order to reduce beneficiaries’ incentive to switch to MTFs and avoid the minimum out-of-pocket requirements that are central to this option, DoD would need to establish procedures for col-lecting payments from TFL beneficiaries seeking care from MTFs. If the savings that would accrue from reduced spending for Medicare were included, the introduction of cost sharing under this option would reduce the federal spending devoted to TFL beneficiaries by about $14 bil-lion through 2014 and by about $40 billion through 2019. Approximately 22 percent of those savings would come from a reduced demand for medical services rather than from a transfer of spending from the government to military retirees and their families. An advantage of this option is that greater cost sharing would increase TFL beneficiaries’ awareness of the cost of health care and promote a corresponding restraint in their use of medical services. Research has generally shown that introducing modest cost sharing can substan-tially reduce medical expenditures without causing mea-surable increases in adverse health outcomes. Among its disadvantages, this option could discourage some patients (particularly low-income patients) from seeking preventive medical care or from managing their chronic conditions under close medical supervision, which might negatively affect their health. «CBO» -3,700 -4,000 -4,300 -14,300 -39,700 007; Military Compensation: Balancing Cash and Noncash Benefits, Department of Defense, September 2003
  • October 20, 2009 10:13 AM
    3 New Presumptive Agent Orange Illnesses B cell leukemias, Parkinson's disease, and ischemic heart disease are...

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