ROTC and TRICARE Insurance

[RIRetiree]

Good Morning,

Ok so this is a little specialized of a question but here goes. I am on active duty (about to retire in Sept) and my son has a 4 year ROTC scholarship. His medical insurance will be through me with Tricare - Humana East. Has anyone had any experience with navigating this?

Does he get his own DEERS entry as a reservist? Does he stay as a dependent on mine? Is this going to be a hassle?

And finally, if you have experienced sending your child away to college did you switch them over to Tricare - Select or keep them on Prime?

Thanks.

 

[kinnem]

Cadets in ROTC programs are not insured through the military. They (or their parents) provide their coverage. He should still get his insurance coverage through you. I actually took a risk and covered my DS with the college insurance and dropped him from my policy back in the day. Saved me some bucks. My assumption was if anything serious happened I could afford to cover it out of pocket.

 

[123456]

We moved DS to TRICARE select so he could meet with his (former Prime PCM) doc when at home, and at school without a referral if necessary. Of note, DS school location is in TRICARE East and we're in TRICARE West - which requires a completely separate TRICARE account (so more $$ than if we were a single family in one TRICARE region).

 

[USMAROTCFamily]

We are on Tricare Prime. When our DD was in NROTC, she did remain on Tricare, but we also had to make a change, as she was in a different Region and she couldn't remain on Prime for some reason, although I can't recall the specific details as it was 9 years ago. If I recall, there were some pain points in making the changes (as we know nothing is ever easy in dealing with these military orgs), but we navigated through it. For the most part, she used the on-campus services for health care that were covered through them, but there were times when she needed to go off campus and had to get some prescriptions off campus. We never had any major, big issues or big out of pocket expenses, but she never really had any major health issues, either.