Health Care Happenings

Oct 06 2009

TRICARE, An Excellent Value?

3 Responses to “TRICARE, An Excellent Value?”

1. # Royon 07 Oct 2009 at 4:13 pm

   Could you be more specific about what words bothered you? My mother is in an assisted living facility and has been on the TRICARE system for a number of years. I don’t have any complaints so far, but maybe I should?

2. # CDR René A. Campos, USN-Ret.on 09 Oct 2009 at 11:42 am

   Roy, guess the words just had a different meaning to me, particularly in light of recent events, most recently being the announcement of TRICARE Standard inpatient co-pay fee increases.

   MOAA’s been working hard these last three years to prevent DoD from increasing TRICARE fees and passing those fees on to beneficiaries. We are glad the system is working well for you, unfortunately that’s not always the case for beneficiaries under the age 65. We also hear a lot from active duty and reserve members and their families who are frustrated with accessing care and getting referrals in the system.

3. # James Bruneron 11 Oct 2009 at 10:37 am

   The problem with discussing TRICARE is that the reader or listener may not know which TRICARE is being discussed, as the exchange above shows. I don’t know of anyone who has serious concerns about TFL, except the fear that DoD or Congress will do it serious harm. Some feared that the current national healthcare crisis would somehow do it serious harm, but Congress dodged that bullet by telling us that TFL and the VA system would be exempt from any legislation that would come out of the current negotiations.
   That’s where DoD (and even more to the point, MOAA) should have stepped in and said, “Look, we have a better idea. Something like TFL is what everybody wants. If DoD would just turn TFL over to the agency of the government that is responsible for healthcare (HHS) and open TFL up to the public and let them pay premiums through their taxes like we all did for Medicare, then every taxpayer in the country would be fighting to ‘keep the [government] from increasing fees and passing those fees on to beneficiaries.’”
   Members who separate from service would no longer have to choose from among myriad TRICARE plans or VA medical centers that–except for TFL–satisfy nobody, either beneficiary or provider.
   Nobody thinks MTFs should merge into a nationwide system, but the VA serves people who will never wear a uniform again while leaving their family members to fend for themselves. Except for specialized treatment of certain service-related problems, no veteran I know would prefer to drive many miles to a VA medical center rather than see a local family doctor, as those of us who are covered by TFL do. Integrating veterans and TFL into a public healthcare plan that provides equal or better benefits would result in enormous savings.
   H.R. 676, a bill that has been before Congress since 2003, is such a plan. It would cover everything TFL does, plus dental and long-term care, and all without co-pays. It essentially would improve Medicare and expand it to cover everyone, not just seniors, and would cut insurance companies and their obscene profits out of the picture (and that’s why it has been ignored for six years).
   A simple provision that military retirees would receive this benefit free as a result of having “paid our premiums” through service to our country would finally fulfill the promise the government made to us decades ago. It would also preserve a recruiting and retention incentive MOAA wants to guard.
   Having separate patchwork programs exclusively for veterans and retirees makes no sense when civilians, including most of our spouses and children, suffer the same illnesses and injuries we do.
   “Everybody in and nobody out” makes good fiscal sense as well as a good community. Just join the rest of the country and ALL work together.