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Tricare Reserve Select costs to plunge Jan. 1

Monthly premiums for Tricare Reserve Select will drop by 44 percent for individual coverage and by 29 percent for family coverage effective Jan. 1.

Reservists will pay $47.51 a month for single coverage, down from $81, while for families, the cost will be $180.17 a month, down from $253.

There will be no refunds for those who have already paid the higher premiums since the program was established in 2005.

Tricare Reserve Select is a premium-based health care coverage available for purchase by National Guard and reserve personnel when they are not on active duty, and are not eligible for, or enrolled in, the Federal Employee Health Benefit plans.

TRS coverage is similar to Tricare Standard and Extra.

The reduction is a result of the 2009 Defense Authorization Act, which required Tricare to analyze TRS costs from 2006 and 2007 and set new rates for 2009.

In late 2007, the Government Accountability Office reported that TRS premiums initially had been set much higher than was necessary to support the program — 72 percent too high for single coverage and 45 percent too high for family coverage.

The reduction “is pretty close to what it should be and is consistent with what the GAO proposed,” said retired Air Force Col. Steve Strobridge, director of government relations for the Military Officers Association of America.

But Strobridge decried the decision not to give refunds — and the fact that Congress had to enact a law to get the Pentagon to move on the issue.

Retired Navy Capt. Marshall Hanson, legislative director of the Reserve Officers Association, said that while the reduction in costs is “wonderful,” his group will work with other organizations to urge refunds of the difference in premiums for those who have been paying the higher amounts.

Austin Camacho, a spokesman for Tricare, said there is “no retroactive response” associated with the reduction in premiums.

“This is the way Congress has structured it,” he said.

Premiums are based on past experience with claims and expenses, he said. With TRS launching in 2005, he said, Tricare needed time to see what actual claims and costs would be “to determine how much we should charge.”

In a response to the 2007 GAO report, Dr. Ward Casscells, assistant defense secretary for health affairs, acknowledged that the method of calculating premiums did not accurately reflect the military’s costs, and that he hoped a better method would be found when enough data was available about the use of health benefits by reservists and their families.

Congress also had ordered structural changes in the TRS program in each of the past three years, which slowed the “data maturation process,” he said.