Retirees Could Receive Tricare Refund Check

Military retirees who paid annual Tricare Prime enrollment fees in 2018 or 2019 could soon see a refund check in the mail, thanks to a new change to how the system calculates their annual out-of-pocket maximum payment.

The annual maximum out-of-pocket payment, or "catastrophic cap," for any retiree family with a service member who joined the military before Jan. 1, 2018, is set at $3,000. For those who joined after Jan. 1, 2018, the annual retiree cap is about $3,600. Those users pay about $600 per year for plan enrollment, while future retirees will pay close to $1,000.

After a set of sweeping Tricare reforms went into effect in 2018, the annual fee paid by retirees to use Tricare Prime no longer counted toward the yearly out-of-pocket max. That meant some families were faced with an increase of about $600 in their yearly Tricare spending.

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