Breakthrough Reached In Iraq Funding Bill
On Improved Health Benefits
For Guard And Reserves And Their Families

WASHINGTON (Thursday, Oct. 2) – The Senate Thursday night added to the Iraq/Afghanistan supplemental appropriations bill a plan to improve health care benefits for National Guard and National Reserve enlistees and their families, advanced by a bipartisan group led by Sens. Tom Daschle (D-S.D.), Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), Mike DeWine (R-Ohio), Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.) and Christopher Bond (R-Mo.).

“Right now our Guard and Reserve troops are full-time soldiers with part-time health care,” said Leahy, the co-chair of the Senate’s 83-member National Guard Caucus.  “This is a major step forward for the citizen-soldiers of our National Guard and Reserves.  It fills in huge gaps in the healthcare safety net for them and for their families.  Few steps we can take right now can and will do more than this will to improve morale and readiness.  We are relying on them for our security, and this will let them know that they can rely on us when it counts.”

To date, more than 200,000 members of the National Guard and Reserves have been activated as a result of military action in Iraq.  President Bush and his Administration have announced that many of these citizen-soldiers could face longer deployments, as long as 18 months including training.  Despite the fact that these soldiers have been recognized as critical elements to the military’s Total Force concept, and despite the fact that Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Richard Myers has called the Guard and Reservists critical to the war and post-war activities in Iraq and Afghanistan, many Guard and Reserve soldiers and their families lack adequate healthcare coverage prior to deployment.  A 2002 General Accounting Office report showed that 20 percent of Guard members and Reservists who are drilling and ready to deploy do not have adequate health insurance.  The compromise plan approved Thursday night by the Senate will expand their eligibility, and their families’ eligibility, under the military’s TRICARE health insurance system.

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