New Retirement System Proposal From Quad Review.. My Head Hurts…
August 7, 2008
| IMMEDIATE RELEASE | No. 660-08 August 05, 2008 |
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Second Volume of Tenth Quadrennial Review of Military Compensation Released
The Department of Defense released today the second volume of the report of the Tenth Quadrennial Review of Military Compensation (QRMC), which assesses the effectiveness of military pay and benefits in recruiting and retaining a high-quality force.
Every four years, DoD commissions a complete review of compensation principles and concepts for members of the armed forces. The 10th QRMC began in 2006.
DoD will study the recommendations for potential implementation and send selected proposals to Congress as proposed legislation.
The second part of the QRMC reviewed non-cash and deferred compensation, focusing on the following four topics: retirement, Tricare, recruiting and retention incentives for health care professionals, and quality of life. Significant recommendations for each area follow.
Retirement. The commission recommended the department conduct a multi-year test of a new retirement system, to increase the services’ force management flexibility. This new retirement system would provide automatic contributions to service members’ TSP accounts, vesting, payments for reaching service milestones and separation pay. The commission maintains the new retirement system will provide greater equity, flexibility and efficiency, and may result in larger individual monetary outcomes.
Tricare. To ensure retiree fees for Tricare are fair to all retiree populations, the commission recommended under-65 retirees using Prime pay 40 percent of the Medicare Part B premium, and under-65 retirees selecting Standard/Extra pay 15 percent of the Part B premium. Family premiums would be set at twice the individual premium regardless of family size. Premium increases would be phased in over a four-year period. Over the years, the share under-65 retirees paid of their health care costs has declined, while over-65 retirees are paying a significantly higher portion of their health care costs. The commission’s recommendations will return a sense of parity between the two retiree populations, while ensuring the health system remains economically viable.
Medical Personnel. The commission examined options to increase the recruiting and retention of medical, dental and nurse corps personnel. The commission’s recommendations included increasing benefits for the Health Professions Scholarship, improving active duty nurse recruiting by expanding the market and adding educational opportunities, recruiting non-citizens with U.S. health degrees and leveraging inter-service transfer bonuses.
Quality of Life. The commission provided several recommendations to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of quality of life programs, including the adoption of health care and dependent care flexible spending accounts, creation of education vouchers, formation of military charter schools and changes to the child care system. The committee further suggested the department change the way it develops the overseas cost of living allowance rate, to be consistent with the methodology used in the continental United States.
This is the second volume of the study, covering non-cash and deferred compensation. The first volume was released in March, and focused on the following cash compensation areas: pay comparability, special and incentive pays, pay for performance and housing. Full recommendations, in greater detail, can be viewed on the Web at http://www.defenselink.mil/news/QRMCreport.pdf .
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120 OIF/OEF Vets Committing Suicide a Week
April 22, 2008
This article is from the San Francisco Chronicle. I am not sure I agree with all of it, but they are quoting emails that have been discovered from the VA. Read below.. Post what you think in the forums.
D/C
VA stalling on care, judge told at S.F. trial
Tuesday, April 22, 2008
He said veterans are committing suicide at the rate of 18 a day - a number acknowledged by a VA official in a Dec. 15 e-mail - and the agency’s backlog of disability claims now exceeds 650,000, an increase of 200,000 since the Iraq war started in 2003.
Justice Department lawyer Richard Lepley countered that the VA runs a “world-class health care system.” He said the changes the plaintiffs seek in their lawsuit - better and faster mental health care, and more rights for veterans appealing denials of benefits - are beyond the judge’s authority.
“Of course we’re obliged to provide health care,” Lepley said, but “the court does not have standards to determine the speed or the scope or the level of that care.”
U.S. District Judge Samuel Conti is presiding over the nonjury trial, scheduled to last two weeks. Conti, a conservative jurist and World War II veteran appointed to the bench by former President Richard Nixon, ruled in January that the case could go to trial. In doing so, he rejected the government’s argument that civil courts have no authority over the VA’s medical decisions or how it handles grievances.
If the advocates can prove their claims, Conti said in his ruling, they would show that “thousands of veterans, if not more, are suffering grievous injuries as the result of their inability to procure desperately needed and obviously deserved health care.”
He also ruled that veterans are legally entitled to five years of government-provided health care after leaving the service, despite federal officials’ argument that they are required to provide only as much care as the VA’s budget allows in a given year.
But at a later hearing, Conti indicated he was uncertain about his authority to require spending on particular types of health care. The lawsuit plaintiffs - Veterans for Common Sense in Washington, D.C., which claims 11,500 members, and Veterans United for Truth, a Santa Barbara group with 500 members - want him to order the VA to provide immediate treatment for suicidal veterans and prompt care for those suffering from post-traumatic stress.
The trial follows publication of a Rand study last week that estimated 300,000 U.S. troops returning from Afghanistan and Iraq, or 18.5 percent of the total, suffer from major depression or post-traumatic stress.
The lawsuit is a proposed class action on behalf of 320,000 to 800,000 veterans or their survivors. The advocacy groups say the VA arbitrarily denies care and benefits to wounded veterans, forces them to wait months for treatment and years for benefits, and gives them little recourse when it rejects their medical claims.
“The time delays are staggering,” Erspamer, the plaintiffs’ lawyer, told Conti on Monday. Although the VA says it decides the typical claim for benefits in six months, he said, the agency takes far longer to review post-traumatic stress claims, and four years or more for the government to hear veterans’ appeals of denied treatment.
Veterans who seek benefits within the VA’s grievance system have no right to a lawyer and no right to demand records or question opposing witnesses, Erspamer said. The plaintiffs want Conti to grant those rights and to require the agency to set a timetable for deciding claims.
Lepley, the government’s lawyer, said the VA has undertaken a “huge staff increase” - 20 percent in mental health, 25 percent in claims processing - and now provides one mental health staff member around the clock at every VA center, as well as a suicide-prevention hot line.
For those who do not need immediate care, he said, the agency has a policy of scheduling a mental health appointment within two weeks, and has reached that goal at 80 percent of its facilities.
“These kinds of medical decisions are not something that this court can inject itself into,” Lepley said. He referred to the plaintiffs as “single-interest groups” and said the legal rights they seek in the VA benefit system, such as the involvement of lawyers, are “not in the patients’ interest.”
E-mail Bob Egelko at begelko@sfchronicle.com.
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/04/22/MNQK109AA7.DTL
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