FederalDaily - December 26, 2007
Spending Bill Would Block FDA Lab Closings
Congress has passed a measure that would eliminate all funding for a Food and Drug Administration
(FDA) plan to close more than half of its regional laboratories and force out a significant number
of employees. The lab-closing ban is part of the $555 billion omnibus spending package for Fiscal Year
2008 which Congress recently passed and President Bush is expected to sign. The bill, H.R. 2764, includes
language providing no funds for the FDA to close the labs as part of any reorganization of its Office
of Regulatory Affairs, said National Treasury Employees Union President Colleen Kelley, whose union
has opposed the move. Earlier this year, the FDA started making plans to consolidate 13 regional laboratories
and close as many as half of them. The agency has proposed closing its labs in Denver, Detroit, Kansas
City, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Winchester, Mass., and San Juan, P.R.. “The testing conducted
at these FDA labs directly impacts every citizen in our country,” said Kelley. To see more, go
to: www.nteu.org.
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Panel Delivers DoD Benefits Recommendations
A final report delivered by DoD’s Task Force on the Future of Military Health Care includes
a host of recommendations, including a proposed “modest increase” in enrollment fees for
TRICARE for Life beneficiaries. That fee, the report said, would not be to reduce DoD costs, but rather
to “foster personal accountability and is consistent with the Task Force philosophy that military
retiree health care should be very generous but not free.” The panel recommended the change be
phased in over four years. The report, which the panel delivered to Deputy Defense Secretary Gordon
England on Dec. 20, also included observations and recommendations for DoD’s pharmacy program.
According to the report, the DoD’s pharmacy co-payment policies and formulary tier structure
do not provide “adequate incentives” to drive users to the most cost-effective alternatives,
such as mail-order prescription service. The panel consequently recommended that lawmakers and DoD
revise the pharmacy tier and co-payment structures based on clinical and cost-effectiveness standards.
To see more, go to: www.defenselink.mil/releases/release.aspx?releaseid=11577
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AFGE Applauds New Outsourcing Protections
The American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) applauded a range of outsourcing protections
that were inserted into the Fiscal Year 2008 omnibus appropriations bill passed this week by Congress.
The legislation would exclude health care and retirement costs from the contracting-out cost comparison
process for all non-DoD agencies, AFGE noted, “eliminating the unfair advantage contractors receive
for contributing less than what is required of federal agencies to their employee benefits.” The
bill, H.R. 2764, would also give all federal employees the right to appeal agency contracting-out decisions
to the Government Accountability Office for an independent review and would prohibit the Office of
Management and Budget (OMB) from requiring agencies to conduct OMB Circular A-76 privatization studies,
AFGE said. And, it would require the establishment of contractor inventories in at least three cabinet-level
agencies that would track cost and size in an effort to identify private contracts that have been poorly
performed, AFGE said in an Dec. 19 statement. To see more, go to: www.afge.org/Index.cfm?Page=PressReleases&PressReleaseID=811
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