If you use Tricare insurance: Tricare for Life, Tricare Prime, Tricare Standard through Triwest Region (roughly Minneapolis, Minnesota down to El Paso, Texas… all the way west to Hawaii and Alaska), you’ll want to tune in and listen to all of the changes that are going to affect you.
Scott Celley, Vice President of External Affairs for TriWest joins us to discuss information you want to know about the big switch on April 1st. As you may or may not know, TriWest lost the Tricare contract to United Healthcare and beneficiaries have a lot of questions about how they will be affected. We read off some of our viewer’s questions to Scott and we go into detail asking about Standard versus Prime. We talked about:
- The differences between Tricare Standard and Tricare Prime
- The new hospital being built at Pendleton and how it will affect your doctors you’re seeing along with boundary moves.
- Current referrals for your specialty doctors and clinics.
- Doctors having the option of not re-signing up for United Healthcare who currently accept TriWest benefits.
- Retirees being affected by new boundaries and possibly not having the option to use PRIME (i.e. being forced into STANDARD)
- Exceptional Family Members affected by the change
Are you a Retiree? Now you may see if you’re one of those affected by the Tricare Prime Service Area (PSA) reduction: check to see if you live in a ZIP code with this tool. ZIP code listings are regularly updated, so check back frequently. For all the most up-to-date information on PSA changes, visit www.tricare.mil/psa.
Use the ZIP code look-up tool at: www.tricare.mil/psazip.
