georgelesley
Tennessee
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Joined: 07/29/2010
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I am retired USAF and wife and I are on tricare for life. In helping a non vet friend new to Medicare I found out that some military retiree’s find the advantage plans worthwhile. i see the ads about dental, vision, money back, etc. As 100% VA disabled I dismissed it for me until I was told by an agent that United Health Care has overseas coverage as well, something standard Medicare does not, although tricare supposedly does.
So, because we do travel some overseas, especially the wife, that caught my attention. The wife also liked getting dental and money back of course. I was also told we could still go to our doc’s because in this area and indeed nationwide most doc’s are in the plan.
Any mil retiree’s have experience with these plans good or bad?
George 20 yr USAF & Lesley
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charlestonsouthern
Summerville, SC
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Joined: 04/16/2009
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George, your non-vet friend (new to Medicare) will not have the benefits available to him which you now have and will have when you become eligible for Medicare. That is why you can’t compare your benefits package (as part of your USAF retired medical) to any civilian package he may sign up for.
He wants supplemental insurance in order that it may the amount which Medicare won’t pay; generally Medicare will pay up to 80 percent of his medical bills; the supplemental insurance he would buy pays the remaining 20 percent as long as the billed medical items are approved medical items by Medicare. When you reach age 65 for Medicare, your Tricare (because you are retired military) becomes your supplemental health insurance and you pay no premiums for such supplemental coverage and have all free medications and prescriptions. That is good news for you. Now the bad news. We are retired USAF also. But we buy travel health insurance when we leave the US or it’s territories from a subsidiary of USAA Insurance Company; the last time we were out of country was 2020 before Covid, and the travel medical was 100 dollars for two weeks for both of us. I think that is pretty good, and we used it for medical treatment twice.
As far as dental is concerned, we use the Dept. of Defense prescribed and sponsored company, Metropolitan Life. It is a negotiated contract for dental costs, and this insurance company won the bid. The former company who had the contract was Delta Dental. We do pay a premium for this; what I like is that the premium is negotiated by the government.
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