MOAA and National Healthcare Reform

Dear Commander Moomy,

As Congress enters its month-long August recess, I want to clarify MOAA’s perspective on national health care reform and its possible implications for you and all members of the military and veterans' community and their families and survivors.

Many MOAA members have strong opinions on the politicians involved, strong preferences for one political party or the other, and strong views on both the principle and the specific details of national health care reform.

From MOAA’s standpoint, our tax-exempt, nonprofit status precludes us from taking partisan stands for or against any politician or political party. We take positions on issues. And in the interest of delivering our members the most bang for their membership buck, we devote our limited resources to addressing issues that directly affect our national defense and the military and veterans' community. For these reasons, our primary focus is on the aspects of the draft health care legislation that will affect you and the military community - military and VA health care, TRICARE, Medicare, and TRICARE For Life.

Our research and advocacy efforts on national health care reform are targeted at six primary goals:
Safeguarding military and VA beneficiaries’ health benefits;
Ensuring military and VA beneficiaries can choose other insurance;
Ensuring military and VA beneficiaries aren’t taxed on the value of those health benefits;
Preserving and improving military and VA beneficiaries’ access to providers of quality health care;
Ensuring long-term sustainment of Medicare (and TRICARE For Life) - and a fix for the broken Medicare payment formula that now poses annual threats of significant cuts that would erode providers’ willingness to see Medicare and TRICARE beneficiaries; and
Keeping our members apprised of how pending legislation could affect them and encouraging grassroots communications to their elected representatives to protect their interests.

We've sent a Military Coalition letter to every member of Congress, and thus far MOAA members have generated over 35,000 e-mails to their legislators using our alert. Every indication we've received from the Administration and congressional leaders of both political parties is that they share the goals listed above (read MOAA’s Aug. 7 legislative update for the latest specifics).

But there's a long way to go in the legislative process, and hard experience tells us severe budget pressures can undermine the best intentions. The bottom line: The entire MOAA staff and I are here to serve you. We will continue communicating with you, so we can let you know what we are working on and you can tell us what your concerns are. Please make sure you are signed up for our weekly Legislative Update and check our Health Care Happenings blog for the most up-to-date information.

I want to assure you MOAA will continue to be extraordinarily vigilant on this front. I encourage you to use MOAA’s national health reform alert to keep pressure on Congress to protect your interests. And please visit with your elected officials during this August recess.
Thank you for your continuing support and membership in MOAA.

All the best,
VADM Norb Ryan Jr., USN (Ret)President