![\"\"](\"http:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/04\/dorian-gray.jpg\" "\\"dorian")
Donna and I are going to a Medicare seminar on base this morning. She turns 65 in May; I’ll get there in October. Gee, this is happening so fast!<\/p>\nDonna and I are going to a Medicare seminar on base this morning. She turns 65 in May; I’ll get there in October. Gee, this is happening so fast!<\/p>\n
Military retirees have a pretty good medical insurance plan called Tricare. At age 65 we get booted out of the program, but it’s not as bad as it sounds … what happens is that we switch over to Medicare, augmented, if we choose, with a Tricare supplement called Tricare for Life. This, from what we hear, is a really good plan, and we intend to do it. This morning’s seminar, for military retirees approaching age 65, will walk us through the application process.<\/p>\n
What about the VA?\u00a0 Tricare for Life is a better option for us.\u00a0 As a retired officer with no significant disabilities, I’d have to pay proportionally more in co-pays for VA services than other VA patients, and quite a bit more than I’d have to pay under Tricare for Life.<\/p>\n
For the past several years, our primary physicians have been military doctors assigned to the clinic at Davis-Monthan AFB here in Tucson.\u00a0 That ends when we go on Medicare and Tricare for Life, and we’ll have to find a civilian doctor.\u00a0 We’ll still be able to have our prescriptions filled on base, though, and that is a great thing.\u00a0 Now I understand why so many military retirees settle near large bases and why they get so upset whenever a new round of base closing negotiations begins.<\/p>\n
A military career is rapidly becoming one of the last great careers, or at least one of the last careers to offer good retirement pensions and medical care.\u00a0 I suppose it won’t be long before Republican politicians turn on us the same way they turned on teachers, cops, firemen, and other public sector employees.\u00a0 They’ll have a hell of a fight on their hands when they do.<\/p>\n
Update<\/strong> (a few hours later)<\/em><\/span>: Props to the Tricare and Pass & ID folks on base, who gave us an informative and useful briefing, and who issued Donna a new ID card in nothing flat.\u00a0 We also noted that the public area television in the waiting room at Pass & ID was set not to Fox but to MSNBC.\u00a0 That’s because of me<\/a>, you know.\u00a0 I’m feeling good about the military today!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Donna and I are going to a Medicare seminar on base this morning. She turns 65 in May; I’ll get there in October. Gee, this is happening so fast! Military retirees have a pretty good medical insurance plan called Tricare. At age 65 we get booted out of the program, but it’s not as bad […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14,2,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5859","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-military","category-personal","category-politics"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5859","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5859"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5859\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5863,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5859\/revisions\/5863"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5859"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5859"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5859"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}