Showing posts with label Tri-Care. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Tri-Care. Show all posts

Friday, July 24, 2009

Tri-care problems need attention

DoD to focus on health care access problems

By Karen Jowers - Staff writer
Posted : Friday Jul 24, 2009 10:48:42 EDT

Although defense health care does not fall within the purview of Tommy Thomas, deputy undersecretary of defense for military community and family policy, military families do.

So Thomas is looking into military families’ complaints about access to health care.

He plans to travel to Fort Drum, N.Y., and Fort Campbell, Ky., with representatives from the Tricare Management Activity to hear firsthand about that particular issue, said Arthur Myers, principal director of the military community and family policy office, in testimony Wednesday before the House Armed Services military personnel subcommittee.
read more here
http://www.armytimes.com/news/2009/07/military_family_help_072409w/
Myers noted that spouses testified in a Senate hearing earlier this year that they rated their health care as excellent, but access as poor.

“And what we’ve found out [is that] a lot of health professionals will not accept Tricare. So constantly we hear at Fort Campbell, these families have to travel to Nashville, an hour and a half, to get the care,” Myers said.

Friday, May 30, 2008

PTSD:Fix Tri-Care or hire more VA doctors

Military Insurance Falls Short on Mental Health Care

Halimah Abdullah


McClatchy Newspapers

May 29, 2008
May 28, 2008, Washington, DC - Across America, soldiers, veterans and their families are running into red tape and roadblocks when they try to use their military insurance to get treatment for ailments such as post traumatic stress disorder.

Since 2003, some 40,000 troops have been diagnosed with PTSD. The number of cases rose by roughly 50 percent in 2007, according to Pentagon statistics released Tuesday.

The deployment of hundreds of doctors and therapists to Iraq and Afghanistan and the shortage of military health care providers has forced patients at U.S. installations to wait for months for appointments — and longer if they need to see a specialist, according to advocacy groups for members of the military and their families.

Meanwhile, civilian doctors and psychiatrists say they're often faced with tough decisions about whether to turn away patients on Tricare, the Defense Department program that insures 9.2 million current and former service members and their dependents, because its reimbursement rates are low and its claims process is cumbersome.

Others volunteer their time and services rather than navigate Tricare's red tape for what may ultimately prove to be a small reimbursement for services.

"We do have a lot of doctors who are seeing Tricare patients almost on a pro bono basis because they care and for the love of their country. But it's easier to do that if it's a dozen patients than if there are 100 patients," said Steve Strobridge, the director of government relations at Military Officers Association of America.

Tricare's reimbursement rate are linked to Medicare levels. Health care providers who treat patients on both programs will take a 10 percent pay cut on July 1 and a second, 5 percent, pay cut on Jan. 1, 2009.
go here for more
http://www.veteransforcommonsense.org/ArticleID/10238

Wednesday, April 23, 2008

TRI-CARE Fraud costs military health program $100 million-plus

Fraud costs military health program $100 million-plus

Fraud in Philippines costs US military health program more than $100 million

RYAN J. FOLEY
AP News

Apr 23, 2008 13:41 EST

The U.S. military's health insurance program has been swindled out of more than $100 million over the past decade in the Philippines, where doctors, hospitals and clinics have conspired with American veterans to submit bogus claims, according to prosecutors and court records.


Seventeen people have been convicted so far — including at least a dozen U.S. military retirees — in a little-noticed investigation that has been handled by federal prosecutors out of Wisconsin because a Madison company holds the contract to process many of the claims. It has not been accused of any wrongdoing.

At the center of the case is Tricare, a Pentagon-run program that insures 9.2 million current and former service members and dependents worldwide. The United States closed its military bases in the Philippines in 1992 and withdrew its active-duty forces, but thousands of retirees remained. Some saw an opportunity to pry easy cash from Tricare.

Health care providers in the Philippines filed claims for medical services never delivered, inflated claims by as much as 2,000 percent and shared kickbacks with retirees who played along, court records reviewed by The Associated Press show.

"There just seemed to be so many possibilities for abuse of the system, and there were so few controls in terms of monitoring," said former U.S. Attorney Peg Lautenschlager, who oversaw prosecutions in the late 1990s.

Pentagon auditors say Tricare moved slowly to uncover and stop the fraud. And a February audit warned that the program is still vulnerable to rip-offs because of lax controls and that similar fraud schemes are starting to emerge in Latin America.

News of the scope of the fraud comes as the Pentagon seeks to raise fees for Tricare's beneficiaries — fourfold, in some cases. The proposed increases have outraged groups representing servicemen and have been blocked by Congress.

Tricare paid $210.9 million in overseas claims in 2006, the latest year for which figures were available. At the height of the fraud in 2003, Pentagon officials say, two-thirds of the $61.8 million paid to Philippine providers — about $40 million — was fraudulent.

The fraud in the Philippines was so extensive that the number of claims filed there skyrocketed nearly 2,000 percent between 1998 and 2003 even as beneficiaries there — about 9,000 mostly retired military members and dependents — remained constant.
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Friday, December 7, 2007

4,700 households notified of Tri-care data theft a month after the fact?

Tricare data breach affects 4,700 families

By Karen Jowers - Staff writer
Posted : Friday Dec 7, 2007 16:19:05 EST

Letters are in the mail to about 4,700 households who submitted claims through the Tricare Europe office since 2004 about a data breach involving their personal information — a month after the breach was reported.
Most of those affected have since moved from Europe.

Electronic Data Systems notified Tricare on Nov. 7 that they had not properly secured a part of the system it maintains for Tricare, and “certain external entities” had been allowed access to a file with personal information.

That file contained full or partial Social Security numbers. For one or more members of each household, it included their name, date of birth, and a medical diagnosis code associated with a health benefits claim submitted to Tricare Management Activity.

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