S. 5142 Healthcare for Our Troops Act
As you know, the EANGUS Legislative team initiated a Call-To-Action regarding healthcare on June 30, 2023. That Call-To-Action went to the US House of Representatives only. Now it is time for EANGUS to push the same legislative ask to the US Senate.
EANGUS strongly supports the re-introduction of S. 5142 Healthcare for Our Troops Act, introduced during the 117th Congress. This legislation would have provided Reserve Component (R.C.) servicemembers with zero-cost TRICARE insurance. Additionally, this legislation expands TRICARE eligibility to R.C. servicemembers currently working for the federal government in their civilian capacity.
S.5142 – Healthcare for Our Troops Act was introduced by Sen Tammy Baldwin (WI) and Sen Susan Collins (ME) on November 29, 2022, during the 117th Congress 2nd Session.
Servicemembers are required to meet medical deploy ability requirements. An estimated 130,000 National Guardsmen and Reservists do not have health insurance under the currently disjointed systems of third-party health contractors and Periodic Health Assessments (PHAs), significantly impacting the Reserve Component’s medical readiness. Inconsistent healthcare coverage for members of the Reserve Component makes meeting these requirements difficult to achieve.
- 5142, Healthcare for Our Troops Act, would have ensured servicemembers meet the medical standards of a deployable force at no cost to the servicemember. This change provides the Department of Defense (DoD) with a powerful recruiting and retention tool and a significant employer incentive to retain talented individuals in gainful civilian employment.
EANGUS does not believe that dental care only will make a significant improvement in medical readiness. As a last resort effort, the Reserve components use mitigating systems to provide zero-cost dental care and improve dental readiness. They currently use mass medical events with dental providers, a dental voucher system, and send servicemembers to providers near annual training facilities at the cost of the reserve components. With all these systems currently in place, there is no reason to believe that dental insurance solely would significantly improve reserve component readiness. Furthermore, no such plan, system, or program for healthcare currently exists. Healthcare issues are often more complex, time-consuming, and expensive to correct. We believe the most significant impact would be that the enlisted, especially our junior ranking members, would have to take more time away from civilian employers to complete the required dental care currently provided during their military service time.
Under current law, National Guard and Reserve servicemembers who are federal employees in their civilian capacity are ineligible to enroll in TRS. This creates confusion in coordinating benefits for servicemembers and their families and prevents servicemembers from establishing continuity of care and treatment as they deploy or transition in or out of the federal government. S. 5142 would have struck the language that disallows servicemembers from accessing TRS simply due to working for the federal government in their civilian capacity.
Don’t hesitate to contact your representative and urge them to support the re-introduction of S. 5142 into the 118th Congress by responding to this Call-To-Action.
If you have further questions regarding the Health Care for Our Troops Act, please do not hesitate to contact Kevin Hollinger at kevin@eangus.org or contact him direct at (202) 670-1826.