FederalDaily - May 21, 2007
House Bill Preserves TRICARE Discounts
When the House adopted the FY 2008 DoD spending bill this week, it preserved the current TRICARE pricing
plan and extended the freeze on prescription drug co-payments. The bill, H.R. 1585, also includes language
that would extend federal pricing discounts to TRICARE prescriptions filled at retail pharmacies, said
National Association of Chain Drug Stores (NACDS) President Steven Anderson on May 17. Lawmakers blocked
amendments to the bill that would have barred extending the Federal Supply Schedule discounts to DoD
TRICARE retail prescriptions. The discounts produce more than $250 million in savings annually for
DoD, Anderson said. “This bill is pro-soldier and pro-veteran in that it protects the right
of TRICARE beneficiaries to benefit from their relationships with a community pharmacy,” Anderson
said. To see more, go to: www.nacds.org
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Veterans Less Likely to Be in Prison Than Non-Veterans
Males who served in the armed forces were about half as likely to be in prison compared to those who
have never served in the military, according to new Department of Justice (DOJ) statistics released
May 17. The DOJ report looked at prison populations in federal and state facilities for 2004. In the
DOJ survey, an estimated 140,000 veterans were held in state and federal prisons in 2004 and almost
all the veteran prisoners were male. The veteran incarceration rate (630 prisoners per 100,000 veterans)
is about half of those who never served (1,390 prisoners per 100,000 non-veteran U.S. residents), the
report said. The discrepancy is largely attributed to age, the report said. In 2004, two-thirds of
male veterans were at least 55 years old, compared to 17 percent of non-veteran men, and the older
men have a lower incarceration rate. Despite the declining percentages of prisoners with prior military
service, the estimated number of veterans in state and federal prison increased by more than 50,000
between 1985 and 2000. Since then, the number of veterans behind bars has dropped slightly, by about
9 percent. To see more, go to: www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs
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OPM Understates Security Clearance Delays
The Office of Personnel Management (OPM) may be understating the extent of the delays that continue
to plague the security clearance process for private government contractors, the Government Accountability
Office (GAO) said. GAO, in a report released May 17, looked at the timeliness and completeness of OPM’s
process to determine eligibility of industry personnel for top secret clearances. It was based on data
GAO collected last year. In 2005, OPM took over responsibility for DoD private contractor clearances.
The statistics that OPM and Office of Management and Budget (OMB) report to Congress on the timeliness
of the clearance process do not portray the full length of time it takes many applicants to receive
a clearance, the report said. GAO’s analysis showed industry personnel waited more than one year
on average to receive top secret clearances, longer than OMB- and OPM-produced statistics would suggest,
the report said. “While some progress has been made in reducing times for initial clearances,
the wait is still unacceptably long for reinvestigations, top secret investigations and backlogged
requests,” said Sen. Daniel Akaka, D-Hawaii, chairman of the Senate Homeland Security subcommittee
on Oversight of Government Management and the Federal Workforce. To see more, go to: www.gao.gov/highlights/d07842thigh.pdf
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