VA Secretary Defends Enrollment Fee

The Bush administration has proposed to charge some users of the Department of Veterans Affairs health system an annual $250 enrollment fee and hike co-payments on prescription drugs from $7 to $15. Several veterans organizations have attacked the proposal (see next item), but VA secretary Jim Nicholson compares the enrollment fee favorably to the fee paid by military retirees enrolled in Tricare. Furthermore, he maintains that the VA fee is “more justified” because, while military retirees must have served at least 20 years, VA patients might only have served “as few as two years.” In response to assertions that many veterans can’t afford the annual $250 enrollment fee, Nicholson countered that no priority 7 and 8 veterans are destitute, and priority 8 veterans have incomes that range, for veterans with no dependents, from $25,000 to $71,000, depending upon their locations.