Military retirees who believe Washington has grown insensitive to their complaints of declining access to service health care have a fresh reason to believe they’re right.
With thousands of retirees being turned away daily from service hospitals. Army Secretary Togo D. West, Jr., granted former congressman and convicted felon Dan Rostenkowski special permission in May to have prostate cancer surgery at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington. Federal prosecutors say Rostenkowski, for many years the powerful Democratic Chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, defrauded taxpayers of an estimated $600,000 while in Congress. Chicago voters denied him re- election in 1994, thus ending a 36-year career. By then, Rostenkowski had been indicted by a federal grand jury on multiple counts involving abuse of office. He pleaded guilty to two charges of mail fraud last April in return for prosecutors dropping numerous charges tied to improper gifts, postage stamp abuses, and phantom employees. On 17 May, Rostenkowski underwent a radical prostatectomy at Walter Reed. The surgeon was Colonel David McLeod, the hospital’s chief of urology. After a five-day stay, Rostenkowski returned to Chicago but revisited Walter Reed for follow-up care, said Tom Buchanan, his lawyer.
Army officials said Rostenkowski’s health insurance plan has been billed for the cost of the military care. Rostenkowski, meanwhile, began serving a 17-month prison sentence on 22 July, entering the federal prison system through its medical center in Rochester, Minnesota.
Military retirees and dependents eligible for Medicare are barred from enrolling in Tricare Prime, the services’ new, man- aged-care program. As a result, as Tricare is phased in nationwide, space-available care for the elderly is disappearing. Medicare eligibles are expected to be locked out within five years unless Congress allows Medicare to reimburse the cash- strapped military system for the cost of caring for its elderly.
Proposed legislation to allow a test of that process, called Medicare subvention, still is alive in the current Congress, but barely so. The House virtually has ignored the issue. After defeating an amendment to the 1997 Defense bill from Senator Phil Gramm to allow a test of subvention starting in January, the Senate ordered the Clinton administration to provide a detailed plan by 6 September for designing a cost-neutral test. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that even a test could add $200 million or more to governmental red ink next year. Pentagon health officials disagree and hope to produce a convincing package to sway lawmakers before Congress adjourns for the November elections.
Meanwhile, Army Lieutenant Colonel Mariane Rowland, Secretary West’s spokesperson, confirmed that Rostenkowski was given “Secretary of the Army designee status” for surgery and follow-up care at Walter Reed. “The designee status has, from time to time, been granted for former eligibles who recently concluded their prior-eligible status,” Colonel Rowland explained, “if the anticipated period is brief and if there are benefits that will accrue by permitting the treatment or surgery to be conducted by doctors already familiar with the specific case.” Colonel McLeod had examined Rostenkowski earlier about his prostate condition, said Ben Smith, a spokesman at Walter Reed. But Smith could not say when or if the earlier visit or visits occurred before January 1995 when Rostenkowski still would have been a congressman and eligible for care. Members of Congress, Supreme Court Justices, and members of the President’s cabinet have blanket eligibility. Former or retired lawmakers such as Rostenkowski do not.
Colonel Rowland said she cannot say how Rostenkowski’s request reached Secretary West, but it did not come through personal communication—one Democrat to another, for example—nor did any of Rostenkowski’s friends make the call. Secretary West declines further comment on the arrangement, she said.
At about the time Rostenkowski sought care, the Army denied secretary-designee status at Walter Reed to a former West Point cadet suffering from a spinal cord injury. Secretary West reversed that decision after Rostenkowski’s own treatment became known. Frank Rohrbough, Deputy Director of Government Relations for The Retired Officers Association, said his group was fielding many complaints from retirees angry that “a former member of Congress, who had in fact been convicted of a felony, was able to receive care in a military treatment facility, while they themselves, who served their country honorably, sometimes have difficulty getting care.”
Knowledge that Rostenkowski’s insurance plan will reimburse the government does little to ease the anger, he said. “Our members see that same kind of space [made available to Rostenkowski] being taken away from them,” Rohrbough said. “And they have a point.”
Colonel Rowland said, “The Secretary believes he has a responsibility to answer [questions on the matter] in the way that he has. By addressing: What is the impact on taxpayers? None, because reimbursement is being sought. What is the length of [Rostenkowski’s] care? It’s a short time. He also addressed who approved it; it was him. Beyond that, he does not wish to comment.”
The National Taxpayers’ Union estimates Rostenkowski’s congressional pension at $95,000 a year. A federal judge reviewed Rostenkowski’s net worth and was comfortable enough with what he found to order the former lawmaker to pay the cost of his own jail term.