TRICARE Premium Hike, Gender Pay Gap and More

Military personnel and retirees who carry adult children on their TRICARE health insurance plans will see significant premium hikes next year. The Defense Department announced the cost increase last week.

The TRICARE Young Adult Prime and Standard options, which cover beneficiaries aged 23-26, will increase to $306 per month and $228 per month, respectively.  

“TRICARE is required to set these premiums to cover the full cost of health care received by TYA beneficiaries. For the first time since TYA was created in 2011, TRICARE has sufficient statistically valid cost data to set annual premiums,” the Pentagon announcement said. Officials noted that TRICARE Young Adult coverage is comparable to other platinum-level health care plans.

While the Pentagon is obligated to charge more for those premiums, a bipartisan group of lawmakers wants to protect you from financial scams.

Reps. Matthew Cartwright, D-Pa., Gerald Connolly, D-Va., and 24 other cosponsors introduced the Annuity Safety and Security Under Reasonable Enforcement (ASSURE) Act, which aims to protect federal employees from crooks who try to swindle them out of their retirement benefits.

Richard Thissen, president of the National Active and Retired Federal Employees Association, says the legislation would protect feds from “pension advance” schemes that offer annuitants immediate cash if they sign over all or part of their future monthly pension checks to the lending company.

Cartwright and other lawmakers previously introduced the legislation to protect retirees from predatory lenders. Cartwright notes that “While current federal law already prohibits federal and military retirees from assigning their pensions to a third party, many companies have resorted to skirting state and federal laws by requiring the retiree to deposit his or her pension in a separate bank account controlled by the firm.”

The National Women’s Law Center has some mostly good news for female feds represented by unions: The gender wage gap among union-represented public sector workers is about half that among their public sector counterparts who are not represented by unions. We say “mostly” good news because, well, there’s still a gender wage gap.

According to research by the group, women represented by public sector unions are paid 24 percent more than their counterparts who aren’t represented by unions, and they’re also more likely to have employer-based health insurance coverage.

And finally, the Washington Post notes that the Office of Personnel Management will expand the Federal Long Term Care Insurance Program to opposite sex domestic partners. According to the Post:

“Currently, those eligible to apply are active employees, retirees, spouses, children 18 or older and unmarried same-sex domestic partners who meet certain standards. The rules will add opposite-sex partners on the same terms, as well as their adult children, and will apply the same policies to unmarried partners and children of active and retired military personnel.”

(Image via ConstantinosZ/Shutterstock.com)