{"id":72034,"date":"2023-01-24T20:01:58","date_gmt":"2023-01-24T20:01:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/one.sightlinemg.com\/navytimes\/uncategorized\/2023\/01\/24\/national-guard-pushing-for-health-insurance-better-pay-more-training\/"},"modified":"2026-08-08T14:40:03","modified_gmt":"2026-08-08T14:40:03","slug":"national-guard-pushing-for-health-insurance-better-pay-more-training","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/one.sightlinemg.com\/navytimes\/news\/your-navy\/2023\/01\/24\/national-guard-pushing-for-health-insurance-better-pay-more-training\/","title":{"rendered":"National Guard pushing for health insurance, better pay, more training"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The National Guard is in a bit of a turnaround period. After two decades of high operational tempo during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan that at times made Guard service as much of a commitment as active duty status, the component is taking stock of what it does and what it can offer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At the top of the National Guard Bureau chief\u2019s priority list is getting guardsmen covered by no-cost military health insurance<\/a>, regardless of their duty status, as well as pay and training that would put them more on par with their active duty counterparts. Today, 60,000 Guardsmen are uninsured, receiving no health benefits from their civilian employers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThere will be some cost to this, but I believe the lost readiness costs more than the price of that health care,\u201d Army Gen. Hokanson told reporters on Tuesday, adding that providing the benefit \u201cis ultimately the right thing to do, both morally and for the medical readiness of our force.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A bipartisan group of senators introduced the Healthcare For Our Troops Act<\/a> in December, which would make Tricare Reserve Select, an insurance plan already available to National Guard and Reserve troops for a fee, available at no cost.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Duty status reform<\/a> is another top priority, which would streamline the dozens of different schemes for pay and benefits accrual guardsmen are subject to while on active duty orders, resulting in many guardsmen receiving less compensation than their active duty counterparts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe spend weeks, months, even years away from our families, but to be side-by-side performing the exact same mission and the same duties and not be treated the same is something that needs to be resolved,\u201d Hokanson said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

With an eye toward keeping up with the active component, the Guard is also planning more large exercises, more <\/b>training rotations and modernization of its brigades and divisions to more closely mirror the active duty Army.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThis will keep us seamlessly interoperable with the Army, make rotations more predictable and give our guardsmen more leadership opportunities,\u201d Hokanson said. \u201cMost of all, it will ensure we are ready whenever our nation calls.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That\u2019s also the aim of a forthcoming component-wide fitness challenge.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cStarting in March, we\u2019re instituting a monthly fitness challenge for our force,\u201d he said. \u201cThe challenges emphasize not only exercise, but things like nutrition and total fitness to encourage our soldiers, airmen and their families to focus on taking care of themselves, becoming more resilient, building individual readiness and hopefully having fun in the process.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

These moves put the National Guard more in line with the active duty Army and Air Force at a time when their missions have started to look more separate. Regular deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan characterized both active and Guard service between 2001 and 2021, but <\/b>these days the Guard is spending more time on domestic mobilizations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For example, tens of thousands of guardsmen activated to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 and 2021, many of them spending months working in hospitals or staffing public testing and vaccination centers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAnd so what we\u2019re really trying to do is encourage our Guardsmen and our trainers at every single level of leadership to make sure that we do focus on readiness, because we don\u2019t know how much time we\u2019re going to have to prepare,\u201d Hokanson said. \u201cSo everything we can do at the individual level, and the small-unit level to build that readiness, so that we\u2019re ready when called, or if it\u2019s a large-scale mobilization \u2015 we\u2019ve got that foundational readiness build so we can decrease the amount of organizational readiness we need to build.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\t