If the military personnel panel of the House Armed Services Committee has its way with the 2008 defense authorization bill, Congress, once again, would bar the Pentagon from raising Tricare enrollment fees. Rep. Vic Snyder (D-Ark.), panel chair, noted that the Pentagon’s own task force on the future of military health care and the Government Accountability Office will not have their reports ready until late this year. Without those “careful, comprehensive, unbiased” reviews, Snyder said the Defense Department’s “premature proposals” would unduly burden military retirees and “not really address systematic cost drivers within the system.”
The Air Force has dispatched an element of its Natural Disaster Recovery Team to Guam in the wake of Super Typhoon Mawar, which has caused widespread damage on the island and at Andersen Air Force Base. The team will assess the damage and put together a recovery cost estimate for…