To expand the capabilities of the nation's active duty forces, the Department of Defense (DOD) relies on the 1.2 million men and women of the Reserve and National Guard. Currently, reserve components constitute nearly half of the total armed forces. Although DOD requires reservists to use TRICARE DOD's health care system for their own health care, using TRICARE is an option for their dependents.

GAO noted that: (1) aggregate Medicare payments for covered nursing home services likely cover the cost of care needed by beneficiaries, although some refinements to the payment system are needed; (2) Medicare policy changes have required many nursing homes to adjust their operations; (3) the adjustments have been particularly disruptive for homes that took advantage of Medicare's previous paymen

GAO noted that: (1) in prisons that adopted a prisoner copayment program, prison medical facilities experienced average reductions in sick call visits of 16 percent to 50 percent; (2) BOP health care officials state that frivolous visits to medical units do occur and that some reduction in this kind of abuse could be anticipated if some additional charge were levied; (3) the Congressional Budget

GAO noted that: (1) processing TRICARE claims costs several times as much as processing Medicare claims--$7.50 compared to $1.78 per claim on average; (2) however, much of the cost difference appears to be attributable to differences in program design and processing requirements; (3) for example, TRICARE offers three different benefit packages, with reimbursement rates that are established for ea

GAO noted that: (1) in conjunction with a rising federal inmate population, BOP's health care costs (not adjusted for inflation) increased from $137.6 million in FY 1990 to $372.1 million in FY 1999, an average annual increase of about 8.6 percent; (2) adjusted for inflation, BOP's per capita inmate health care costs increased from $3,001 in FY 1990 to a high of $3,703 in FY 1996; (3) the per cap

GAO noted that: (1) the various legislative proposals and the Department of Defense's (DOD) fiscal year 2001 budget request offer benefit enhancements much-sought-after and popular with the beneficiaries, but would have limited impact on retention; (2) several would expand or make permanent existing demonstration projects aimed at improving access and pharmacy coverage for older retirees, who hav

GAO noted that: (1) VA's national formulary is administered by the Pharmacy Benefits Management Strategic Healthcare Group (PBM), a strategy modeled after one commonly used in private health care systems; (2) PBM adds drugs to, and deletes drugs from, the national formulary on the basis of a review of current literature related to drugs' safety and efficacy and the contributions they can make in

GAO noted that: (1) in Colorado, Iowa, Massachusetts, and Washington, the mental health carveouts limited Medicaid beneficiaries to a single prepaid mental health plan; (2) because there was no choice of carveout plan, these states generally tried through contractual provisions to ensure that prepaid health plans (PHP) did not limit beneficiaries' access to services inappropriately in order to co

GAO noted that: (1) evaluating the prescription drug benefits Medicare HMOs offer is an important but challenging undertaking for prospective enrollees; (2) to determine which plan best meets their needs, beneficiaries need to assess how HMOs' use of formularies can affect their drug benefit; (3) comparing plans can be difficult because the types of formularies HMOs use and the way in which they

GAO noted that: (1) evaluating the prescription drug benefits Medicare HMOs offer is an important but challenging undertaking for prospective enrollees; (2) to determine which plan best meets their needs, beneficiaries need to assess how HMO's use of formularies can affect their drug benefits; (3) comparing plans can be difficult because the types of formularies HMOs use and the way in which form