How the Affordable Healthcare Act doesn’t help veterans

TSO sent us this link with his question “Remember when Vote Vets said that the health care law would help military retirees and their families?” Why, yes, I do. I also remember asking the crew at the now-defunct VetsVoice blog a slew of questions they couldn’t answer about how the Affordable Healthcare Act wouldn’t adversely affect veterans on Tricare. VoteVets was tooting Obama’s horn and telling us that we’d all be taken care of under the AHA. Well, it seems that the AHA isn’t beneficial to us at all.

First, let me explain how I arrived at the decision to continue my military career until I retired. I knew my pay would be low, but I accepted that because I knew that my family and I would have that low pay offset by having no healthcare expenses. My son had just been born before my first reenlistment and I realized how much I had saved by having him in a military hospital. So, yes, the free healthcare had played largely into my decision.

As my kids moved out of the house, I knew that they would have Tricare to help them through their transition years into their own healthcare plans and I had prepaid for it with my service.

Well, it seems that the AHA is changing all of that, according to the Wall Street Journal. Their article is behind a paywall, so here are some excerpts;

Families covered by Tricare, the health program for active and retired members of the military, must pay as much as $200 a month to let an adult child stay on their plan until age 26. Most families in private plans now pay no fee to extend such coverage. Military families are starting to complain about the disparity, saying they can’t afford those premiums and have let their children go uninsured.

[…]

Initially, Tricare wasn’t affected by the health law, which meant it which was focused on traditional private insurance plans that didn’t have to allow children to stay on their parents’ plans past age 21, or 23 if they were full-time college students. Once the provision became popular with consumers, lawmakers passed separate legislation requiring Tricare to adopt it.

The final legislation directed the Department of Defense to charge families for the full cost of the additional coverage. Sen. Mark Udall (D., Colo.), an author of the legislation, said the fee was included because legislators wouldn’t support providing the coverage free of charge. Looming defense cuts have put pressure on Tricare and overall military spending.

That fee is either $176 or $201 a month for each young-adult dependent who wants to be covered through a parent’s insurance, depending on the type of plan. Tricare says the premiums are based on data for medical costs incurred by similar dependents and administrative expenses. Next year, premiums will fall to $152 or $176 a month.

Nick Papas, a White House spokesman, and Cynthia Smith, a Defense spokeswoman, both said Tricare differed from private insurance plans because it didn’t charge members a premium that could absorb the additional costs of covering the young adults. They pointed to Congress’s role in including the fee in the legislation.

So, like I’ve said before, the Affordable Healthcare Act was supposed to bring down health care costs for all Americans, well, except veterans. It’s a good thing they’re not balancing the budget on veterans’ backs, huh?

Category: Barack Obama/Joe Biden, Veteran Health Care