November 6, 2015
TRICARE Young Adult
(TYA) beneficiaries will see a steep rise in their premiums next year.
TRICARE provides
coverage for dependents of active duty servicemembers and retirees up to age 21
(or 23 for full-time students). After that, TYA allows qualified adult children
to purchase TRICARE coverage until age 26, consistent with other civilian
health plans.
Beginning Jan. 1, premiums
are increasing to $306 monthly for TYA Prime and $228 monthly for TYA Standard.
Why are costs spiking
26 to 47 percent?
The TYA program is
required to charge its young adult beneficiaries premiums that cover the full
government cost of coverage.
DoD originally had
to rely on estimates when establishing premium costs. Now that the program has
been up and running, it has several years of actual costs to set premiums based
on real health care usage.
The cost of the TYA
program is spread over a small beneficiary group of approximately 45,000
enrollees.
This is the big difference
between the military TYA program and other civilian insurance programs that
cover young adults. Most civilian plans spread their young adult costs over
their entire enrolled population, so every insured person, regardless of age,
pays a small amount more.
MOAA questions the
affordability of this benefit for military families, especially those with more
than one child in this age range, and is looking into possible solutions to
lower this cost.