What Will Beneficiaries Gain From Higher TRICARE Fees?
Military Update: As they review the Defense Department’s latest plan to raise TRICARE fees and co-pays, particularly for working-age retirees and their families, key congressional panels...
View Article‘Force of the Future’ Might Survive Attack on Its Architect
Military Update: The irony of the blistering attack that Brad R. Carson, the Defense Department’s top personnel official, endured last week at his confirmation hearing to...
View ArticleGraham: Open Fed Health Plans to Guard and Reserves
Military Update: Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), chairman of the Senate armed services subcommittee on military personnel, signaled Tuesday he will support a plan to allow drilling...
View ArticleVA Might Add More ‘Presumptive’ Illnesses for Vietnam Vets
Military Update: By August this year many more thousands of Vietnam War veterans, those suffering from bladder cancer, hypothyroidism, Parkinson’s-like symptoms and even high blood...
View ArticleFamilies, Therapists Brace for Cuts to Autism Care Fees
Military Update: Jessika Ashcraft, wife of an Army helicopter pilot at Joint Base Lewis McChord, Wash., praises the progress their four-year-old son, afflicted with mild autism,...
View ArticleCare Commission Shocker: The Push to End VA Healthcare
Military Update: Seven of 15 outside health advisors appointed to recommend ways to improve veterans’ health services over the next two decades have proposed shutting down...
View ArticleDecision Time Nears for Easing the Survivor Benefit Offset
The armed services committees will be deciding whether to continue to ease a sharp loss of survivor benefit payments for these widows.
View ArticleAppeals Court Finds the VA Wronged Vets by Ignoring 2010 Law
Military Update: A three-judge panel on the U.S. Court of Appeals for Veterans Claims has ruled unanimously that the Department of Veterans Affairs ignored “plain language”...
View ArticleCommissary Reforms Advance with Shopper Safeguards
The commissary reform package, largely shaped by Defense officials on advice from the grocery industry, has gained steam on promises to preserve most of current savings for patrons while modernizing...
View ArticlePanel Votes to End Pay-Benefit Slide, Tweak Ex-Spouse Law
Military Update: With U.S. forces still at war and House members up for re-election in November, the House Armed Services Committee rejected almost every idea the...
View ArticleSenators Want Caregiver Benefits Phased in for Older Vets
Military Update: A showpiece of the Veterans First package that the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee unveiled last week is a multi-billion-dollar initiative to phase in for...
View ArticleSenate Panel: Military Pay Raise Caps Should Continue
Senators endorsed a military pay raise for Jan. 1, 2017, of 1.6 percent rather than the 2.1 percent needed to match private sector wage growth as measured by the government’s Employment Cost Index (ECI).
View ArticleSenators Link Higher TRICARE Fees to Health Care Gains
Military Update: The Senate Armed Services Committee is embracing some TRICARE fee increases proposed by the Obama administration, particularly for working age retirees and their families....
View ArticleSenate ‘BAH Reform’ Would End Windfalls of Rent Sharing
Military Update: The Senate Armed Services Committee, as part of a more aggressive campaign to hold down military compensation costs, is calling for “substantial reform”...
View ArticleCommissary Guardians: Modernize? OK. Privatize? No Way!
Military associations representing millions of commissary shoppers have joined with manufacturers and suppliers of store goods to try to stop the pilot to privatize the commissary system.
View ArticleNew Balance Nears Big Win in Recruit Athletic Shoe Campaign
Military Update: For decades the military services avoided paying millions of dollars extra every year to subsidize American-made athletic shoes for new recruits by adopting a...
View ArticleHouse-Senate Conferees to Negotiate Key Benefit Changes
Military Update: The House and Senate, in passing separate versions of the fiscal 2017 National Defense Authorization Act, haven’t yet agreed on the size of the...
View ArticleCongress May Impose Military Pay Caps – Again
Military Update: Will ‘Frozen Pay’ Congress Be Numb to Military Pay Caps? A House-Senate conference committee negotiating final details of the fiscal 2017 defense authorization...
View ArticleCommission on Care Report Reignites VA ‘Choice’ Debate
Military Update: Twelve of fifteen commissioners appointed by Congress and the president to propose reforms to veterans’ healthcare have endorsed 18 “bold” steps to transform the...
View ArticleVA Advisory Group: Critics Wrong to Ignore MyVA Reforms
Military Update: Before Donald Trump or House Veterans Affairs Committee Chairman Jeff Miller (R-Fla.) or a panel of health industry executives called this month for...
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