Carlucci Blocks Charge to Dependents

Defense Secretary Frank C. Carlucci has scuttled a proposal by White House budget officials to charge military dependents and retirees a user fee for health care, Pentagon sources said today.

The sources, who spoke on condition they not be named, said Carlucci had intervened personally with officials at the Office of Management and Budget and made clear his opposition to the idea.

‘Plan Will Be Scrapped’

“OMB is backing down,” one ranking official said. “This plan will be scrapped.”

Dan Howard, the Pentagon’s chief spokesman, declined to say today whether OMB had agreed to discard the plan. But Howard made it clear that Carlucci had fought the budget office over the matter.

“The secretary understands that the military member and his family count medical care in the system as one of their most important fundamental benefits,” Howard said at a briefing.

“An increase and change in charging fees to our service personnel would constitute a decrease in their net pay and benefits package. And changing this benefit would be a breach of faith with our military service members, their families and our retirees, and have a negative effect on attracting and retaining quality personnel.

“It would undo some of the gains that we have established in the past eight years in building the best-quality military force in the history of the nation,” Howard said.

Under the plan, military dependents and retirees would have been charged $10 for every outpatient doctor visit up to an annual ceiling of $100; $3 to have prescriptions filled and $50 for admission to a military hospital.