[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 146 (2000), Part 2]
[House]
[Pages 2701-2702]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]



      U.S. GOVERNMENT SHOULD HONOR COMMITMENT TO MILITARY RETIREES

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Miller of Florida). Under the Speaker's 
announced policy of January 6, 1999, the gentleman from Oregon (Mr. 
Walden) is recognized for 30 minutes as the designee of the majority 
leader.
  Mr. WALDEN of Oregon. Mr. Speaker, my purpose in rising this 
afternoon is threefold. I would like to share with my colleagues a 
story that is virtually unparalleled in illustrating the difficulty 
many military retirees face in the effort to have their government 
fulfill its promise of lifelong health care.
  Second, I want to salute the extraordinary efforts of a retired 
service member in my district, Mr. Len Gagne of Ashland, Oregon, whose 
selfless devotion to his fellow service members has endured long after 
the Government's commitment to them waned.
  Finally, I want to highlight the importance, indeed the absolute 
necessity, of honoring our Nation's commitment to provide lifelong 
health care coverage to our military retirees.
  Here on this picture next to me are some of the 2,500 military 
retirees in Oregon's Rogue Valley, all of whom entered the armed 
services with the explicit promise of lifelong medical care following 
their retirement. As most of my colleagues know, due to downsizing and 
the subsequent lack of space available at many military medical 
facilities, that promise has not been kept.
  Thirteen years ago, Len Gagne and a number of retirees pictured here 
banded together to form a courier service to help military retirees 
from the region obtain prescription drugs more easily. Living in rural 
Oregon where the majority of military retirees live hundreds of miles 
from the nearest military facility makes getting prescriptions filled 
difficult.
  The group began a service to get prescription drug orders filled at 
the Army Medical Center at Fort Lewis, Washington. Now, the 
prescription orders for these men and women were sent to Eugene, 
Oregon, and then to Fort Lewis where they were later picked up by 
volunteers and driven back to Oregon. All of the costs associated with 
this distribution effort were borne by the private individuals and not 
by the Government. So unorthodox was this service that the 
prescriptions were stored and distributed out of a member's home for 
several years before the use of facilities at the Naval Reserve Center 
in Central Point, Oregon were made available.
  About 8 years ago, the makeshift prescription delivery service 
shifted facilities when Beale Air Force Base, located 13 miles east of 
Marysville, California, became Oregon's primary care location. Twice a 
month, courier trips were made to Beale, eventually filling as many as 
2,200 prescriptions per month. In total, the volunteer couriers, who 
used their own vehicles and never accepted a dime of government 
reimbursement, covered more than 25,000 miles a year. The selflessness 
of these men and women allowed many older retirees who could not 
otherwise have made the trip the opportunity to get the prescription 
drugs they needed.
  Mr. Speaker, I have been disappointed to learn that this practice has 
become widespread among military retirees, a practice that they should 
not have to go through to get the prescriptions this government 
guaranteed them.
  Mr. Gagne's operation continued until last year when authorities at 
Beale shut down the courier service, as many military facilities across 
the United States have been forced to do so in recent years. 
Prescriptions were no longer filled for those who did not appear at 
Beale in person. But because many of these men and women are either too 
elderly or too ill to make the taxing journey to Beale or Fort Lewis, 
this cut-off essentially closed the door on life-saving prescription 
drugs for these retirees, some of whom have dedicated over 30 years of 
service to this great country of ours.

[[Page 2702]]

  Around the time Mr. Gagne learned of the cut-off at Beale, he devised 
a plan to continue providing the medicines that he and his fellow 
service members needed, a strategy that was as innovative as it was 
selfless. Len learned of a policy that allowed military retirees whose 
prescriptions are filled at a base being closed under the Base 
Realignment and Closure, BRAC, plan to be eligible for permanent mail 
delivery of prescription medicines. He also learned that McClellan Air 
Force Base, located nine miles east of Sacramento, would be closing in 
July of 2000. Though the Rogue Valley retirees lived literally hundreds 
of miles away from McClellan, Len reasoned that if they could 
demonstrate their dependence on the pharmacy service at that base, 
according to the policy, their supply of prescriptions would be secure.
  So, Mr. Gagne arranged bus trips to transport groups of retirees to 
the closing base where they signed statements of dependency on its 
pharmacy. Again, the people pictured in this photograph on display in 
the House Chamber are a part of that group that went on the bus trip. 
Now, we have to understand the distance from Medford, Oregon, to 
Sacramento is 309 miles, roughly the distance between Washington, D.C. 
and New Haven, Connecticut, or Greensboro, North Carolina, if one 
wanted to go south.
  Imagine, Mr. Speaker, having to go from Washington, D.C. to 
Connecticut or North Carolina to get your prescriptions filled. 
Imagine, a nearly 620 mile round trip every time you wanted to go to 
the drugstore. Well, they chartered buses at $1,150 per trip, all paid 
for by themselves; and approximately 40 people at a time made the 16-
hour round trip to McClellan, where they got a 3-month supply of 
medicines and thereby qualified for the BRAC pharmacy benefit.
  The retirees and dependents pictured here, many of whom are decorated 
combat veterans of World War II, are seen standing outside the 
McClellan clinic during one such trip. I am told that Mr. Gagne's 
ingenuity in organizing these trips is probably without precedent. No 
other retirees have ever traveled en masse to a closing base simply to 
qualify for the BRAC benefit. It goes without saying that it is 
appalling that these retirees are forced to find loopholes in the 
system simply to gain what they were promised by this government years 
ago.
  Mr. Speaker, the basic contract that binds a professional military to 
the government it serves is an uncomplicated one. It is an 
understanding which assumes that in exchange for a life spent in 
service to the Nation, the government has certain fundamental 
obligations to its retirees. In the United States, these obligations 
have traditionally meant a reasonable retirement wage and promise of 
lifetime access to health care. In return, the American people are 
ensured of their defense by a group whose dedication to duty is the 
very definition of professionalism throughout the world, a group whose 
members have laid down their lives by the hundreds of thousands in 
defense of the ideals and freedoms we so often invoke in this House.
  The hallowed bonds between the Government and the military are 
straining in ways that are becoming ominously apparent with each 
passing year. This strain is manifest in the thousands of loyal 
soldiers on food stamps whose condition is often alluded to in this 
very Chamber, but remains uncorrected. It is obvious in the declining 
enlistment and re-enlistment rates that have caused a near panic among 
senior military officials; and I submit to my colleagues, Mr. Speaker, 
that a government unconcerned about busloads of aged retirees traveling 
hundreds of miles at their own expense for basic medicines is not a 
government committed to strengthening those bonds. For how can we ask 
our service members to continue to perform their vital duties while the 
Government fails to uphold its fundamental responsibility to care for 
those who have served in the past.
  It is examples such as the one I have related that compelled me to 
cosponsor the Keep Our Promise to Americans Military Retirees Act. I 
urge my colleagues who have not yet done so to join us in advancing 
this essential piece of legislation. The men and women of the United 
States military who provide the very blanket of security under which we 
spend our lives deserve no less. It is nothing short of outrageous that 
military retirees across this Nation are forced to undergo such 
adversity simply to get what was promised to them in the first place. I 
urge my colleagues to restore the military's faith in the government it 
serves and renew our commitment to our retired service members.
  Finally, Mr. Speaker, I want to extend my personal gratitude to Len 
Gagne and those who assist him and the thousands of men and women like 
him whose commitment to their comrades is matched only by their 
devotion to the Nation they so tirelessly serve.

                          ____________________