Tricare Overseas. Retirees will see more out of pocket cost

Tricare Overseas. Retirees will see more out of pocket cost

Open letter to all Military Retirees living overseas

Recently in an email conversation with a Tricare Management Activity, TMA, employee she told me that what they have done to us is planned to be implemented around the world, so our plight over the last few years is about to be expanded. We are attempting to get service organizations involved in this and had a petition signature drive. I have the email if anyone wants to see it.

When the Tricare Overseas Program was implemented it was done without any thought to local practices or customs and without any safeguards or checks in the system. Given the massive amount of fraud in government run medical programs in the states it wasn't surprising that some fraud would occur overseas as well. In the late 1990's an American opened a clinic for Tricare beneficiaries in the Philippines. He advertised a supplemental plan that would also cover deductibles and copays. There being a large population of beneficiaries in the Philippines and no military bases or health benefits advisers to assist with claims processing or anyway to obtain information on Tricare from TMA it took off. This group immediately overcharged Tricare and less than a year after they started retirees were already reporting that they suspected fraud to TMA. However TMA felt is was not their job to monitor fraud so ignored it and kept paying the fraudulent claims. The reports of fraud continued and even the DODIG found TMA negligent but TMA continued to ignore the fraud. Finally after ten years, two DODIG findings and a congressional mandate they took action. A joint task force was put into place to develop the steps that TMA would take. TMA brought punitive actions to the table designed to punish beneficiaries because they felt that they were to blame for all their problems; after all if they had not used the defrauders TMA wouldn't have any problems. The other members of the task force, the DODIG, DCIS and the Attorney General from Madison WI were all in favor of another action but gave in to TMA with the understanding that their punitive actions would be implemented first to be followed by their plan as the final step to return the benefit to an accessible plan while reducing fraud. However TMA apparently had no plans to honor their commitment and instead implemented all of their punitive measures, except one that Congress overruled, and disregarded their commitment to the last step.

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