TRICARE Changes Causes Glitch for Some Retirees

As a result of contractor changes effective January 1, 2018, some TRICARE Prime retirees in northern states (approximately 4,000) did not get charged for their annual enrollment fee. TRICARE-for-Life (TFL) beneficiaries are NOT impacted by this glitch.

As previously reported in Newsbytes, starting January 1, 2018, TRICARE's beneficiaries in the United States will be covered by two regions—TRICARE East and West—instead of three. The mistake occurred as Humana Military, the new East region contractor, moved TRICARE North users into its system. Retired TRICARE Prime users pay an annual enrollment fee. Starting January 1, 2018, those fees are $289.08 for a single user or $578.16 for a family. Retirees can select to pay their annual enrollment fee as monthly payments through allotments—$24.09 for a single user or $48.18 for a family—or as the single lump sum. Because of the new change from a fiscal to calendar year system, that lump sum payment is now due in January.

For most TRICARE Prime retirees, payments were automatically redirected to the TRICARE North contractor, HealthNet and sent to Humana. However, 4,053 Prime beneficiaries in the former North region were not included in the data file sent to the new contractor in the East region. This error was discovered during the transition reconciliation process.

The Humana website states, "If you received a notice about making automatic payments through a credit card or bank fund transfer and are currently using allotment for payment, please disregard the notification, we appreciate your patience and apologize for any confusion this may have caused."

TRICARE officials said retirees should be able to see whether or not they are among the impacted users by checking their January paycheck for the missed allotment.

"Humana will be sending letters to those impacted users asking for a one-time payment of the missed amount," said TRICARE officials. It can be paid by calling Humana at 1-800-444-5445.