A House panel has voted to block, for at least two years, any increases in Tricare beneficiary cost-shares. It's the first formal step by Congress to derail the Bush administration's plan to raise fees, co-payments and deductibles for military retirees under age 65 and their families.

The armed services subcommittee on military personnel also brought good news to active duty, Reserve and National Guard personnel by endorsing a January 2007 pay raise of 2.7 percent. That is half a percentage point higher than what the administration sought. If the raise is approved by the full Congress, it would be an eighth straight year of annual military raises set 0.5 percent above private sector wage growth.

The subcommittee also endorsed the administration's plan for an additional "targeted" raise for warrant officers and some senior enlisted. This special raise would take effect April 1 of next year. Details of the targeted raise haven't been released.

Language to block the Tricare fee increases, and the surprise boost in the 2007 pay raise, were highlights of subcommittee actions on personnel provisions of the fiscal 2007 National Defense Authorization Act (HR 5122). The full Armed Services Committee will hold its mark-up of the bill Wednesday and additional amendments affecting military personnel will be voted on.

Rep. John McHugh, R-N.Y., personnel subcommittee chairman, said retirees can be confident the fee increases pushed so "energetically" by defense officials are dead until at least 2008.

Whether the Senate will approve any part of the administration's Tricare fee adjustments is still a little uncertain. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., chairman of the Senate military personnel subcommittee, wants them delayed and an independent review conducted of real Tricare cost growth and the projected cost-savings from the administration's plan.

What doomed that plan in the House was both the timing and the details, McHugh told Military Update — timing in the sense that the nation is fighting a war and that some of those who deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan soon would be among the pool of Tricare beneficiaries targeted by the higher fees. That bothered many lawmakers, he said.

There also was great concern over specifics of the plan, McHugh said. The increases were seen as too steep and too swift, with Tricare Prime enrollment fees leaping 200 percent over two years for senior enlisted retirees and 300 percent for retired officers.

On annual pay raises, McHugh said the subcommittee would like to continue increases a half percent higher than private sector until a lingering pay gap, estimated by service associations at 4.5 percent, is wiped out.

When will that be? McHugh isn't sure.

"We know we don't want to stop now," he said.

The pay gap was 13.5 percent in 1999. With a 2.7 percent raise next January, military basic pay will have increased an average of 41 percent over eight years. Counting extra targeted raises for middle and senior enlisted grades, the cumulative increase for some of them is as much as 49 percent.