Armed Forces News

Some 90,000 military beneficiaries who are ineligible for Tricare for Life and Tricare Senior Pharmacy services because they are not enrolled in Medicare Part B are still waiting for the bureaucracy to implement last year’s Medicare Prescription Drug, Improvement, and Modernization Act of 2003. Under the act, a special enrollment period for them will run through Dec. 31, 2004, but the act doesn’t set a starting date. In addition, military beneficiaries who enrolled in Part B in 2001, 2002, 2003, or 2004 and are paying late enrollment penalties can have them eliminated effective Jan. 1, 2004, by demonstrating that they are covered under Tricare for Life. The Military Officers Association of America has expressed concern that the lead time to inform and assist these 90,000 individuals grows shorter each day the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services fails to act.