The Bush administration will ask Congress to provide lifetime Tricare coverage to any service member discharged as "unfit" due to service-related physical or mental health conditions, said Donna Shalala, co-chair of the President's Commission on Care for America's Returning Wounded Warriors.

The Tricare change will be one of the most expensive initiatives in a legislative package the White House will send to Congress by the end of this month. The package is to implement key recommendations of the wounded warrior panel, also known as the Dole-Shalala Commission.

The Tricare proposal, if enacted into law, would open military healthcare to a wave of new beneficiaries, potentially as many as 10,000 newly disabled veterans each year plus their families.

The Dole-Shalala commission report, released in July, said the Tricare change should only apply to service members separated for combat-related disabilities. But White House officials, at the urging of defense officials and service associations, have decided to ask Congress to extend lifetime Tricare coverage to all medically discharged veterans.

Shalala said the White House will propose that the Tricare expansion be applied retroactively to veterans medically separated since 2001. Shalala didn't mention a specific retroactive date but Congress two years ago made eligibility for traumatic injury insurance retroactive to Oct. 7, 2001, the day U.S. forces invaded Afghanistan and began the global war on terrorism.

Under current law, members are separated rather than retired if found unfit for duty because of conditions rated below 20 percent disabling. They receive a disability severance award. Because they are not "retirees," they and their families are ineligible for lifetime Tricare coverage. They can get VA healthcare but family members cannot.

From 2000 to 2006, an average of 9,600 service members a year were separated as medically unfit with disability ratings of 20 percent or less, according to statistics gathered by the Veterans' Disability Benefits Commission, which is due to release its report Oct. 3.

Shalala and her co-chairman, retired Sen. Robert Dole, said Congress also should: