Well, I guess the other question would be what are the costs of Prime AFTER you pay your annual fees?
Is there a deductible? Office visit costs? How much inpatient costs are covered etc.. etc..
Without the supplemental Tricare Standard covers quite a bit (not 100% how accurate I am here) but there is a family deductible of $300 or individual deductible of $150 every year before Tri-Care starts to pay.. I think it's $5 or $10 for prescriptions (that I don't have to wait 3 hours for).
I'm not familiar with Prime as I was using Tri-Care Standard/ Champus even when I was on active duty stationed away from a military base.
This is correct, $300 annual deductable, prescriptions are $5, or $10, and 20% of allowed charges for everything else. Allowed charges mean if they take Tricare they can say the cost of an MRI is $5,000 but Tricare only allows $1200, Tricare pays $960 you pay $240 up to the catastrophic cap of $3,000.
I got a fish hook stuck in my thumb last year. After my drunk friends tried 4 or 5 times to yank it out and the EMT at the fire house tried twice to twist it out I ended up going to the Emergency room where they shot my thumb up and yanked it out. Cost charged by the various people was about $5,000. Tricare paid a total of $1,200. Both numbers to me are retarded. Charging $5,000 is laughable and paying $1,200 is stupid. THAT is why there needs to be reform. When I am king, health insurance will only be policies that cover when you reach $5,000. Everything below $5,000 will be a cash business. No insurance, no grifting, no trumped up bills and if you get caught doing fraud you get a finger cut off with pruning shears. That will bring your day to day health costs down and still allow coverage for catastrophic illness/injury. Basically what you have now is a stupid game of cat and mouse between doctors, hospitals and insurance companies. Obamacare did NOTHING to fix the situation, all it did was force the ####ty situation and costs onto a wider group.