2.15.06
VA budget would send fee hikes to Treasury…

In a major change of strategy, the 2008 Department of Veterans Affairs budget submitted to Congress yesterday separates the fate of proposed fee increases from the VA health care budget.
Under the plan, any money generated from a proposed increase in prescription drug co-payments and a new enrollment fees of up to $750 for priority category 7 and 8 veterans would go into the U.S. Treasury, not directly into the VA’s budget.
The plan is explained in the fine print of the 2008 budget documents.
This arrangement, a departure from previous years, does not make it any more likely that Congress would approve the fee increases — and may even make it easier for lawmakers to reject them. VA budget proposals for each of the past three years had the fee increases built into the health care budget. As a result, when Congress rejected the increases, lawmakers had to find other funding sources to replace the money that would have flowed into the VA budget from the fee increases.
Sen. Daniel K. Akaka, D-Hawaii, the Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committee chairman, said he isn’t likely to approve fee increases under the new arrangement. “The doubling of drug co-payments for veterans — who make as little as $28,000 a year — seems particularly cruel. Take the example of a veteran living on Oahu, where the cost of living is so high, who takes seven different prescriptions each month: his out-of-pocket cost goes up by $600 a year.”
The fact that the fees would go to the U.S. Treasury rather than the VA budget didn’t persuade him, either. “Why are we asking veterans to suffer in order to finance a war?” he asked. “This administration consistently fails to consider the cost of caring for veterans as part of the cost of war.”
Under the administration’s plan, priority category 7 and 8 veterans would have a higher co-payment for prescription drugs and would have an enrollment fee based on their family income. The drug co-payment, now $8, would increase to $15 for a 30-day supply. The new enrollment fee would be $250 for veterans with family incomes of $50,000 to $74,999; $500 for those with family incomes of $75,000 to $99,999; and $750 for those with family incomes of $100,000 or more.
The plan would generate $331 million for the Treasury from the co-pay increase and $138 million from the tiered enrollment fees, according to budget documents.