How We Really Support our Troops?

Some Gratitude
Bush lies about health-care coverage to the National Guard soldiers he’s been putting in harm’s way.
By Mark Goldberg
Web Exclusive: 09.28.04

During his recent speech at the National Guard Association’s annual convention in Las Vegas, President Bush touted his pride and steadfast support for his erstwhile brothers in arms. Not surprisingly, the president’s speech was filled with invocations of September 11 heroism and resolute statements in favor of freedom. But the speech also included some nuggets of actual policy intended to highlight the administration’s ongoing efforts to address pressing quality-of-life issues for reservists.

“We're improving benefits and the quality of life for our nation's citizen-soldiers,” Bush said. “ … We have expanded health-care benefits for Guard and Reserve forces and their family members, giving them access to the military's TRICARE system for up to 90 days before they report and 180 days after deactivation -- and I will ask Congress to make that expansion permanent.”

A kind sentiment, but these words becloud the fact that the Bush administration has consistently fought legislation that would guarantee permanent access to the military’s health-care system for reservists throughout their entire career in the Guard.

All full-time military personnel are eligible for the military’s TRICARE health plan, as are reservists called up for active duty. After reservists are deactivated, however, they generally lose their TRICARE coverage following a short, transitional grace period. Having the option to buy into the military's the military’s TRICARE coverage would be attractive to many reservists and their families, as it offers comprehensive policies at very low cost.

In 2002, a General Accounting Office report found that as many as one-fifth of the nation’s 1.2 million part-time soldiers lacked health insurance. This startled many lawmakers into action, and, in May 2003, Senators Tom Daschle and Lindsay Graham successfully pushed for an amendment to the Senate’s version of the fiscal year 2004 Defense Authorization bill that would protect reservists from going uninsured by allowing them to buy into TRICARE when not on active duty.

Though the “Graham-Daschle amendment” had overwhelming bipartisan support in the Senate, the administration sought to scuttle the proposal as it moved to the House. That June, in a letter to Representative Duncan Hunter, the Republican chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld called the Senate’s efforts to expand TRICARE a “troubling provision” because the amendment amounted to an unfunded entitlement that would drain resources from other, presumably more important Department of Defense activities.

House Republicans agreed with Rumsfeld, and they successfully stripped down the amendment in conference committee. In its stead, the Republican answer was to extend TRICARE coverage to reservists from 60 to 180 days following their deactivation and to 90 days prior to their mobilization -- but the GOP only allowed this on a temporary demonstration basis lasting one year.

To the National Guard Association, minimally extending TRICARE to recently deactivated reservists is not commensurate with the sacrifices made by reservists and their families. According to the association’s Web site, 42 percent of the forces deployed to Iraq will be National Guard or Reserve members later this year. “We feel that if the administration is asking this much of guardsmen and women,” one representative from the organization told me, “they should at least be open to the option of allowing reservists to buy into TRICARE for as long as they remain in the Guard.”

Alas, this administration is not. The Graham-Daschle amendment again passed the Senate’s version of the FY 2005 Defense Authorization bill by a 75-to-25 margin, and again the Bush administration came out forcefully against it. The amendment contains two provisions, one which would make reservists and their families eligible for TRICARE coverage regardless of their mobilization status, and another that would require the Department of Defense to pay civilian health-care premiums for active-duty reservists, along with their dependents, who elect to maintain their civilian health-care plan.

In all, the Pentagon estimates that this would cost a little less than $2 billion per year for the next five years. Though this is a relatively small amount by Pentagon standards, the Bush administration has expressed its hostility toward allocating Defense Department funds to pay for these provisions. In a letter to the Senate Arms Services Committee dated June 28, Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz claimed that the costs of the Graham-Daschle amendment “could only come at the expense of other higher-priority defense needs.”

But by the National Guard Association’s estimates, reservists constitute nearly one-half of all forces participating in homeland defense and “global war on terrorism missions.” As a spokeswoman at the National Guard Association told me, “Guardsmen and women are being used in a different way than in the past. They train just as hard as full-time soldiers, and, as we see in Iraq, are deployed for long periods of time.”

The temporary expansion of TRICARE that President Bush referred to in his speech is set to expire in December (that is, a month after the election). The president’s calculated remarks to the National Guard Association were meant to give rhetorical support to “expanding” health-care availability to reservists, while still opposing legislation that addresses the health-care crisis facing uninsured reservists in a meaningful way.

For his part, John Kerry is much less ambiguous about his intentions to expand TRICARE to reservists. Though he missed the Graham-Daschle votes while on the campaign trail, he’s supported the amendment’s intentions. In his speech to the same association two days later, John Kerry offered the kind of clarity on this issue that his campaign has been so sorely lacking in other areas. “When you sign up for the Guard,” he said, “you should be eligible for TRICARE every day that you serve -- before, during, and after mobilization. End of story.”

Once again, the Graham-Daschle amendment will likely be held up in conference committee later this legislative session, and given the administration’s opposition, its fate remains unclear. As casualty rates mount in Iraq, and with part-time soldiers taking on more and more of the burden of defending our country, the president ought to make it a priority that no citizen-soldier goes uninsured.

Mark Goldberg is a Prospect writing fellow.

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