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WASHINGTON, March 22, 2010 - The TRICARE military health plan meets the standards set by the health care reform bill the House of Representatives passed last night, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates said in a statement issued yesterday.

Calling their health and well-being his highest priority, Gates reassured servicemembers and their families that the legislation won't have a negative effect on TRICARE, which "already meets the bill's quality and minimum benefit standards." "This was clarified by a vote in the U.S. House of Representatives [March 20], and is expected to be re-affirmed by the Senate," Gates said in the statement. "The president and I are committed to seeing that our troops, retirees and their families will continue to receive the best quality health care," the secretary said.

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Something to keep in mind during discussions to come is that Tricare, including Tricare for Life, is not a health insurance company or insurance policy. It is a federal health benefits program created by its own law and governed by its own regulation that interprets and implements that law. Thus, any rules affecting health insurance companies or policies should have no effect on Tricare.

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"Americans who get their insurance through the workplace, cost savings could be as much as $3,000 less per employer than if we do nothing," Obama said in a health reform speech at George Mason University in Fairfax, Va., on March 19, 2010. "Now, think about that. That’s $3,000 your employer doesn’t have to pay, which means maybe she can afford to give you a raise."

We couldn't help but notice that this statistic is at odds with the forecast from the government's nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office that Obama has been so fond of citing in the health care debate.

But the CBO is not where the president got his number. Rather, the White House told us he got this statistic from a November report commissioned by the Business Roundtable, an association of CEOs from some of the country's leading companies. The report, prepared by Hewitt Associates, a global human resources outsourcing and consulting company, states, "We estimate that if enacted properly, the right legislative reforms could potentially reduce that trend line by more than $3,000 per employee, to $25,435."

As a baseline for its analysis, Hewitt assumed that if the government does nothing, health care costs will continue to rise at the same pace they have over the last decade -- just over 10 percent a year. By that measure, health care expenses for companies would rise 166 percent by 2019, a rate they conclude is "not sustainable."

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You can keep your dependent children on your policy until age 26 -- but if they're married, or work where they can get insurance, they aren't dependents.

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Tricare upgrade for children being studied

By Rick Maze - Staff writer
Posted : Monday Mar 22, 2010 17:42:39 EDT

National health care reform, which could be signed into law this week, has a key new benefit for families that will not apply to military families enrolled in the Tricare health insurance program.

A key expansion of benefits in the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, HR 3590, is a requirement for health insurers to cover unmarried children up to the age of 26 who are carried on the policy of a parent.

This change, like the rest of the bill, does not apply to Tricare, according to Defense Department and congressional sources.

But congressional aides, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said several lawmakers have begun investigating how to alter Tricare so that it also covers older children who do not have their own coverage. A change is being considered for inclusion in the 2011 defense authorization bill, which the House and Senate armed services committees will begin writing later this year.

Currently, Tricare covers unmarried children up to age 23 if they are attending college or up to 21 if they are not.

Tricare spokesman Austin Comacho said he could not give a definitive statement about whether Tricare’s age limit for children would be changed.

“The only thing we can be sure of is that there will be no adverse impact to our beneficiaries,” he said.