For retirees 65 and over, the combination of Medicare and TRICARE For Life is pretty much comprehensive. In other words, hard to beat! Medicare is automatically deducted from retirees Soc Security payment - around $80.00 I think - and TRICARE For Life is free.
Good post. True enough.
But . . . :-)
Tricare Prime guarantees reasonable access based upon level of medical care required.
Space availability here is really defined by the number and cost of military and contract physicians available to care for the retiree population. Add to that the increasing cost of prescription drugs. What you then get is this pressure to pass along the cost.
Lower ranking enlisted personnel are the people who particularly grab my sympathy. Unless they have fared well with their civilian careers, those folks, say, E-6 and E-5, may feel the pinch more painfully than the rest of us.
How retirees feel about this situation is usually directly proportional to their beliefs when they chose to make the military a career. For many of us the presumption was life time free medical care. We had at the time we enlisted or accepted commissions good reason for believing the presumption was based upon a promise.
For retirees 65 and over, the combination of Medicare and TRICARE For Life is pretty much comprehensive. In other words, hard to beat! Medicare is automatically deducted from retirees Soc Security payment - around $80.00 I think - and TRICARE For Life is free.
From a fact sheet I believe is still valid:
When beneficiaries age 65 and over become eligible for Medicare Part A, they can use TRICARE For Life (TFL) if they purchase Medicare Part B. These beneficiaries are not eligible for TRICARE Prime but are eligible to use Medicare, network and non-network providers. Under TFL, TRICARE acts as a second payer to Medicare for benefits payable by both Medicare and TRICARE. Beneficiaries can use an authorized Medicare provider and claims will be automatically sent to TRICARE after Medicare pays its portion. There are no enrollment fees for TFL—beneficiaries are only required to pay the Medicare Part B premium. TRICARE is first payer for TRICARE benefits not covered by Medicare, such as pharmacy, which is available only under TRICARE.
Some military treatment facilities will have capacity to offer a primary care affiliation program called TRICARE Plus. Enrolled beneficiaries have priority access to care at military treatment facilities; however, beneficiaries who choose to use TRICARE Extra, TRICARE Standard or TRICARE For Life may also continue to receive care in a military treatment facility on a space-available basis.
The proposed increases are all about passing along costs to people who (in many instances) did not expect to have any cost in the first place. Tricare for Life is a whole new looming disaster, because it will be both about cost and about the politics of Medicare, especially now that the first baby boomers are reaching age sixty.
Anyway, enjoyed your comments. Hope we get to talk more.