• The RFP to replace CRI should be withdrawn and a new RFP issued that would extend the CRI project in Hawaii and California in definitely and use the CRI as a model for implementation of managed health care into other regions throughout the country. The CRI has been thoroughly scrutinized and is proven to be a very popular and effective program. ries. • To make CHAMPUS second payer to Medicare for all DoD beneficia That authority be granted for HCFA to reimburse MTFs for treatment of Medicare eligible DoD beneficiaries. Establish safeguards to prevent the loss of CHAMPUS prior to age 65 for military retirees. Reduce the CHAMPUS catastrophic cap for military retirees and dependents to $1,000 annually: • Funding should be provided, by a small percentage of the "peace dividend" and the savings from CRI and Medicare Subvention. With the continued support from your committee and your colleagues in both the House and Senate, we are optimistic that the DoD will get this strong message in a manner similar to that recently experienced by the Secretary of Veterans Affairs regarding the Rural Health Care Initiative that would have provided health care to non-veterans. If we are successful in implementing these recommendations, maybe there would never be another military family to experience the suffering such as that experienced by the Cox family and countless others. Thank you Mr. Chairman and distinguished members of the Committee for allowing the Air Force Sergeants Association to present our views. WEDNESDAY, APRIL 1, 1992. DRUG INTERDICTION AND COUNTER-DRUG ACTIVITIES, DEFENSE WITNESS HON. STEPHEN M. DUNCAN, DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE COORDINATOR FOR DRUG ENFORCEMENT POLICY AND SUPPORT INTRODUCTION Mr. MURTHA. The Committee will come to order. Our hearing today will address the Drug Interdiction and Counter-Drug Activities, Defense appropriation. The request for fiscal year 1993 is $1,263,400,000, which is basically the same level of funding as this fiscal year. Testifying this afternoon is the Honorable Stephen M. Duncan, Coordinator of Drug Enforcement Policy and Support. Secretary Duncan, we welcome you. Your prepared statement will be made part of the record. Would you please summarize it at this time. SUMMARY STATEMENT OF MR. DUNCAN Mr. DUNCAN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. As usual, in an attempt to anticipate your areas of interest, I made my written statement very comprehensive. I won't begin to attempt to summarize it. I would like to make a couple of observations and then let's get to the questions. On the way here, I was reflecting about how far the Department has come on the counter-drug mission in the 3 and one-half years since the Congress gave the DOD three new major counter-drug missions. It is useful for us to reflect on what has happened during that 31⁄2 years. We have a new President and a new administration. We engaged in Operation Just Cause. There has been a dramatic and historic change in the worldwide strategic situation. The Warsaw Pact is gone, the Soviet Union is gone, and the Cold War is over. We have engaged in the Operation Desert Storm. There have been major changes in the Department's budget. Despite all that, and despite a mission which, under the best of circumstances could only be described as a unique and complex mission for the DOD in which the armed forces have to operate under restrictions of law and policy which they don't have to operate under when they are fighting Saddam Hussein, despite all of that, with this Committee's energetic help in those three years, the armed forces have come a long way in finding out how to perform the counter-drug missions, how to provide support to law enforcement agencies, and how to do it better each year. If one goes by the standard of customer satisfaction and talks to the law enforcement agencies at the Federal, (267) State or local level, we, from our standpoint, hear substantial praise about how we are doing it and what we are doing. We always hear that they would like to have more and more resources but I am not receiving any criticism of significance from any direction. We have to continue to recognize that we don't have all of the answers in the Department. We have to recognize that the way we did business two years ago may be substantially different than the way we will have to do it two years from now as the needs change. I think our counter-drug programs, if not already there, are rapidly approaching a state of maturity. We know how to do our business in a way that we didn't know three years ago when we were starting and wondering what it means to be the "lead Federal agency" for detection and monitoring and how we should go about letting the law enforcement agencies know that we are here to help and how we should help them ask for the help they need. I think the armed forces have already had a major impact. The challenge for people like me, as I see it, is to help the American people understand that you can't send the armed forces in on this one and win the conflict in a 100-hour ground war as we did in Iraq. It will require patience, require us to continually improve the way we do business. We accept that challenge and with your help, we will continue to do just that. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. [The statement of Mr. Duncan follows:] |