Military Expanding Health Care

The Defense Department launched a major overhaul of the health care provided to military dependents, retirees and their families today by soliciting contract bids from private medical insurers that want to compete for participation in the program in California and five other states.

In a test demonstration of the sweeping reform, the Pentagon initially will award four contracts for the health care service--three of them covering two states each and one covering New Orleans, where there is no military hospital. The paired states are California and Hawaii, Florida and Georgia, and North Carolina and South Carolina. They were selected because those areas have the most crowded hospitals and the highest volume of medical care beneficiaries.