General Bell Tackles Tri-care Problems in Korea

For those with non-command sponsored families in Korea this is a big deal:

The inventory of Army housing dictates how many families receive ¿command-sponsored¿ status, Jolissaint said. The number today is about 1,500, he said. Yet several thousand more ¿noncommand-sponsored¿ families are also are living in South Korea.

They paid their own travel costs and live on the economy without benefit of ¿with-dependents¿ housing or cost-of-living allowances. Some feel they can cope financially because of an extra $300 a month in Assignment Incentive Pay paid in Korea to members who extend their tours another year. After Iraq or Afghanistan, any more time away from family is a harder sell.

¿In olden days, if you weren¿t command-sponsored, you couldn¿t get a ration card,¿ said Jolissaint. ¿You couldn¿t access other services on post. Now we are treating these folks as if they are command-sponsored. They get their ID cards. They can come on post. They can use the PX. They can use the commissary. They have access to all services. They just can¿t get housing on post, and there¿s the Tricare Prime issue.¿

In April 2005, William Winkenwerder Jr., assistant secretary of defense for health affairs, clarified in a memo to the services that department policy bans enrollment of noncommand-sponsored dependents in Tricare Prime programs overseas. Winkenwerder wrote that, except in a few select circumstances, only active-duty family members who are ¿command sponsored,¿ as defined by travel orders, ¿shall be eligible¿ for Tricare Overseas Program (TOP) Prime or the Tricare Global Remote Overseas (TGRO) program.

Basically if your family is not command sponsored you cannot get timely access to military health care facilities and then when you go to health care provided by the local Korean health care providers instead, you have to pay additional and up front fees that Tri-care will not cover.  Hopefully General Bell is serious about addressing this issue because the numbers of non-command sponsored families in Korea are increasing.  The simple solution to this will be the camp consolidation at Camp Humphrey if that ever does happen, but in the mean time hopefully a short term fix can be worked out.