Senator McCain withdraws amendment to NDAA prior to its passage

Early this week Senator McCain, Ranking Member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, “dropped” an amendment to the NDAA prior to its passage. This amendment would have allowed enrolment fees for TRI CARE Prime for retirees in 2013 and beyond to be indexed as the DoD had originally intended. This would have resulted in unlimited fee increases in the out years. AUSN and The Military Coalition had fought to get language in the bill which allowed indexing but tied to the COLA increase received by retirees. Because the Coalition constantly monitors these bills on your behalf we learned immediately of the McCain amendment. In less than 48 hours the Coalition with AUSN signing on had sent a letter to every Senator once again making the case that open ended indexing was an unacceptable change to an EARNED benefit. The result, the amendment was withdrawn. This is the value of membership in AUSN and our participation in The Military Coalition.