Gray-area reservists’ Tricare wait - Air Force News | News from Afghanistan & Iraq - Air Force Times

Gray-area reservists’ Tricare wait

Tricare health benefits for so-called “gray area” reserve retirees remain elusive, with signs the Defense Department won’t keep a promised Oct. 1 start date.

Aimed at National Guard and reserve component members who have earned retirement benefits but are not yet eligible for health care or retired pay because they have not reached retirement age, the Tricare Retired Reserve Program was authorized by Congress last October.

Once implemented, retirees will be allowed to sign up for Tricare Standard health insurance benefits, either individual or family coverage. Premiums for coverage, not yet announced, would not be subsidized by the government, making this program unlike other Tricare benefits.

Defense and Tricare officials have been telling reservists and Congress that they expected retired reserve enrollments to begin about Oct. 1, but that date is now in doubt, said retired Navy Capt. Marshall Hanson, legislative director for Reserve Officers Association.

By Hanson’s estimate, the new benefit may not be implemented until February or March.

The Tricare Management Activity, responsible for the military health insurance program, submitted a copy of proposed rules for the health care expansion for White House review on June 28, according to Tricare spokesman Austin Camacho. The White House’s Office of Management and Budget, which oversees all federal regulations, has 90 days to look over the policy and order any changes.

Camacho said this does not change the goal of implementing the program this fall, as announced earlier.

Hanson, though, said that while the White House review could, in theory, take less than three months, there still would be a 60-day delay in the effective date when regulations governing the program are made available for public comment in the Federal Register.

Retired Army Maj. Gen. David Brockel, ROA’s executive director, said the Defense Department has made giving a new benefit to reservists “overly complex and time consuming.”

“What would take a business week to implement, DoD stretches out for over a year,” said Bockel.

Tricare Management Agency officials said a firm implementation date for the program has not been set, but they still believe it will happen before the end of the calendar year.

Delays in implementation feed some National Guard and reserve members’ perception that the Defense Department is reluctant to work on improvements in reserve benefits, even ones like expanded health benefits that have strong congressional support.

One of the people waiting for the new benefits is Michael Kirschner of Gainsville, Fla., a 53-year-old Navy Reserve medical service officer who is prepared by buy Tricare coverage as soon as it is available. “It is hard to understand why it is taking them so long,” he said. “This is not something new they need to create. They just need to change the eligibility to let us in.

“You expect for the government and especially the Defense Department to do a little better for us. They have no qualms of sending us out into conflicts but they don’t seen to care about the aftermath,” Kirschner said.