Now Hear This - August 2011

August 2011 - Navy
By CAPT Tom McAtee

Health care costs new threat to U.S. Military

The Pentagon predicts that the cost of taking care of its troops and retirees will keep growing. That will be a major problem since, even today, the Pentagon says pension and health care costs are eating the U.S. military alive. Retired Marine Maj. Gen. Arnold Punaro, a member of the Defense Business Board that advises the Pentagon on its financial operations, gets a lot of hate mail because he’s talking about something a whole lot of people don’t want to hear about: the rising costs of military health and pension benefits. “General Motors did not start out to be a health care company that occasionally built an automobile,” he says. “Today, we’re on the path in the Department of Defense to turn it into a benefits company that may occasionally kill a terrorist.”

Secretary Gates sees the problem, too. “The Defense Department runs the risk of the fate of other corporate and government bureaucracies that were ultimately crippled by personnel costs,” he said, “in particular, their retiree benefit packages.” Here’s what Gates was talking about: In the past decade, military health care costs more than doubled. They account for $52.5 billion in next year’s proposed budget. Retirees’ pay represents another $50 billion or so a year. People once worried that the cost of a fighter jet or bomber program would devour the military’s budget. Now those concerns rise over health and pension costs. Let’s zoom in on health care. Gates says the average federal worker who is not in the military pays about $4,000 a year for family coverage. The military has its version of health insurance. It’s called Tricare. “The cost of Tricare for a family, for a year, is $460,” Gates says. That is, $460 is the annual fee for workingage retirees – the group Gates has been trying to get to pay a little bit more. But it’s not easy. Just as GM had a union to contend with, Gates has his own challenge: Congress. “The first two years I was in this job in the Bush administration, I went up to the Hill dutifully each year with a request for a tiny increase in the fee for Tricare and got my head lopped off,” Gates said. “And so, the third year, I didn’t try. Now we are asking to move it up to $520, $5 a month for family coverage.” Still, Gates is running into resistance. Why? You can’t compare military benefits to benefits in the civilian world, because the career of someone in the military is often so much harder. Although most think $5 a month as reasonable, the question remains – “What comes next?”

Veterans groups say if the Department of Defense wants to cut costs, there are many other ways to do it.

Tougher Physical Fitness Assessment (PFA) coming

New rules will make passing the physical fitness assessment more difficult than ever before.

There are no changes to how the body composition assessment and the physical readiness test are conducted, but there are administrative revisions that make the PFA easier to fail. The policy will limit Sailors to two chances to pass the PRT per cycle, prohibit extreme weight-loss techniques and change policies for medical waivers.

Sailors who fail the PFA three times in four years are immediately processed for separation. And a failure in either the physical readiness test or body composition assessment means you’ve failed the full physical fitness assessment. The most dramatic change is a tightening of the so-called “bad day” rule, which allowed Sailors to retake the PRT or BCA theoretically as many times as needed to pass.

But under the new rules, a Sailor who fails the BCA cannot retest that portion, which translates to an overall PFA failure. If you fail the PRT, you have 24 hours to ask for a do-over and, then, a week to run the PRT a second and final time. The commanding officer still has discretion to approve or deny the second chance, but you can get only one do-over per cycle. The old policy allowed for differences among commands. For example, one CO could give a Sailor several chances to pass the PRT while another would give just one. Sanctuary for senior Sailors is also out. Under the old policy, Sailors with 18 years or more who failed the PFA three times in four years were allowed to stay in the Navy until they reached 20 years, allowing them to retire with benefits. Under the new rule, these Sailors will be processed for separation without benefits, just like Sailors who haven’t served as long. With the new rules, the Navy is cracking down on extreme weight-loss and tape-test tricks, such as shedding water weight by exercising in saunas, using sweat wraps, taking laxatives and applying hemorrhoid cream on the abdomen to shrink the waistline. Also, medical waivers will be handled differently. If you request two medical waivers for the same condition within one year, or three medical waivers in four years, you will have to go before a medical evaluation board. That board’s decision could lead to a medical discharge. Two aspects of the PRT are out. First, the sit-and-reach is gone. Second, the number of scoring categories has been reduced from 12 to five. The low, medium and high subcategories are gone, leaving outstanding, excellent, good, satisfactory and failure.