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🔍 TRICARE Explained: John Letaw The TRICARE Guy🏅
563 Plays7 months ago
Watch this Episode on YouTube and Subscribe: https://youtu.be/RQN2Me7svoA
🎧 In this episode of "Forget About Money," host David Baughier interviews John Letaw, a retired naval officer and TRICARE expert.🌟
John, The TRICARE Guy, shares his extensive knowledge about the TRICARE healthcare system, providing invaluable insights for military retirees and their families.
John discusses: ⇣⇣⇣⇣⇣
➪ Various TRICARE plans (Prime, Select, Reserve, and Retired Reserve) 🏥
➪ The challenges of transitioning to retirement 🌅
➪ Enrollment processes and pitfalls 🔍
➪ Changes in TRICARE Select fees 💸
➪ Coverage criteria for different treatments, including weight loss drugs and medical emergencies 🩺
➪ Dental and vision care through FedVIP 🦷👓
➪ Navigating TRICARE while living abroad ✈️
➪ Emerging trends and resources for staying informed 🌐
➪ Don't miss John's personal anecdotes and practical advice to make the most of your TRICARE benefits. 📚✨
🔗 Links:
David's Links:
🌐 Fiology: https://www.fiology.com/free-fiology-workbook/
John's Links:
📖 Get John's book "Tricare Around the World" on Amazon: https://a.co/d/eJfcxMx
💬 Join the TRICARE Facebook group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/tricareatw/
🌐 The TRICARE Guy Website and Mailing List: https://thetricareguy.com/
🎥 John's YouTube Channel: http://www.youtube.com/@thetricareguy
Additional TRICARE Resources mention can be found in our YouTube description
🕒 Timestamps/Chapters:
0:00 📢 Introduction to TRICARE and John Letaw
3:30 📋 TRICARE Plans Overview
9:44 🛡️ TRICARE Reserve and Retired Reserve Plans
16:05 🚀 Challenges of Transitioning to Retirement
19:30 🔄 Enrollment Process and Pitfalls
22:20 💰 Changes in TRICARE Select Fees
25:42 🏥 Coverage Criteria and Examples
27:50 💊 Weight Loss Drug Coverage Process
28:56 🚑 Medical Emergency Coverage Example
30:49 🧾 Medical Coding and Coverage
34:53 👓 FedVIP Vision and Dental Care
37:43 🚫 Exclusions: LASIK and Discount Programs
42:15 🌍 Retirement Abroad and TRICARE
44:21 🛠️ Challenges and Solutions
47:41 🌐 Providing TRICARE Support Globally
50:57 ✍️ Writing a TRICARE Guide During COVID
53:53 📚 Resources at thetricareguy.com
56:39 📈 Emerging Trends in TRICARE
🏷️ Hashtags:
#TRICARE #Healthcare #MilitaryRetirement #JohnLetaw #DavidBaughier #ForgetAboutMoney #TRICAREPlans #Veterans #MilitaryBenefits #TRICARESupport #TRICAREGuide #HealthInsurance
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Transcript
Introduction to Tricare
00:00:00
Speaker
Nearly 10 million people use Tricare, but very few understand how Tricare works. In this episode, we attempt to remedy that. Here we go. Welcome to Forget About Money, where we encourage you to take action today so that you can focus on what matters most to you. Today we have the Tricare guy, John Leita. He is a retired naval officer with a passion for service to others.
00:00:27
Speaker
He is the author of the bestselling book, Tricare Around the World, and the creator of the world's most popular Tricare online user group. Today, we're going to talk about the basics of Tricare.
00:00:38
Speaker
how to effectively manage your Tricare benefits while living abroad.
John Leita's Background and Retirement
00:00:42
Speaker
And we are going to hear about John's own financial independence journey and his motivation for helping others. Welcome, John. David, thanks for having me on. John, you are now enjoying the retired life in Hawaii. How is life treating you? Oh, it's always beautiful and sunshiny here. So it's great.
00:01:00
Speaker
Cost of living is a killer but we'll talk about that and how it fit into my retirement plan.
Overview of Tricare and its Beneficiaries
00:01:06
Speaker
I live in San Diego and I've experienced Hawaii so I'm definitely very familiar with the high cost of living area and I hope that we do get into the challenges of those things throughout this interview. Great.
00:01:18
Speaker
John, you are one of the biggest Tricare experts out there. I know you started modestly and your audience grew exponentially, probably quicker than even your own expectations. I have a lot of questions about Tricare, so let's get right into it. Let's start with what is Tricare?
00:01:40
Speaker
Okay, what is TRICARE? So TRICARE is a government-run health care program that is for active duty service members, military retirees, reservists, National Guard, and all other eligible family members.
00:01:56
Speaker
So anyone who's on active duty is using it right now, even if you're going to an MTF, a military treatment facility on base. I may not be aware that you're using Tricare, but you are. But it also covers care in the civilian community off base and around the world. So who is eligible specifically for Tricare?
Tricare Plans and Eligibility
00:02:17
Speaker
Yeah, there's quite a list and it's bigger than people might realize. Tricare has very close to 10 million now authorized users. They live all over the world. So the, as I said, the all active duty members are on it. Military, there are other components, of course, Coast Guard, NOAA, the National Oceanographic
00:02:42
Speaker
an atmospheric agency or whatever that is. Public health service officials are on it. They're all considered part of the uniform services. Then retirees, once you attain retirement through either 20 years of service or medical retirement, you can remain on Tricare.
00:03:03
Speaker
reservists and National Guard, depending on your reserve status, for instance, it would not cover IRR, which is the individual retired reserve or individual ready reserves, excuse me. But it does cover a selected reserve known as the weekend warriors. These are people that drill one weekend every month and a couple of weeks during the year to keep their military skills current. They're covered and their families covered. Retired reservists,
00:03:32
Speaker
Uh, when they retire, uh, after attaining enough drill hours or points, uh, they are on a special plan for retired reservists up until age 60.
Community and Support for Tricare Users
00:03:45
Speaker
And then after age 60, they, they move back into the regular, uh, tricare plans, which are primarily a prime and select, which I can talk about more later. So that's, that's it basically, uh, there's other odd loopholes, but that's, that's the vast bulk of the beneficiaries.
00:04:03
Speaker
Now you mentioned Tricare Select and maybe a few others. I know there's Tricare Prime, Tricare Prime Remote, Tricare Select, Tricare Young Adult. Can you just go through, I don't know how many different types of Tricare plans there are. Can you just go through like maybe the top five, who's eligible and like what's covered?
00:04:23
Speaker
All right, so before I go on, I need to add a note of humility. You call me the premier tri-care expert in the world, or however you phrase it. I just want to say that my great skill or quality in this realm is I am the guy that formed the social media group that everybody congregates.
00:04:43
Speaker
And at this point we have about 20,000 followers in a variety of different groups. And so my great contribution is like herding cats, keeping this community coherent, supportive, factual. So we're putting out key information correctly to our members.
00:05:00
Speaker
But there are others in our group with just i'm humbled by the depth of their knowledge and i don't want to downplay that so. I am learning as i go i am pretty good at this but i do acknowledge some members in our group who are designated as expert.
00:05:19
Speaker
as experts, just that their vast knowledge, having been doing this for 20 or 30 years, is just incredible. And these are the resources we offer in our social media groups. So back to your question now about the variety of plans. The key ones that most people will be in are Tricare, Prime, and Tricare Select. Now, Select used to be called Standard, and some people still use that term, but it's outdated for many years now.
00:05:46
Speaker
They need to kind of update their terminology on that. So PRIME is a managed care program and it's run primarily through the MTF, which is the military treatment facility. And MTFs are the military hospitals and clinics found on base. And you will have an assigned physician there known as your PCM or primary care manager. So the big deal with PRIME is that other than for emergencies, you need to see your PCM first.
00:06:16
Speaker
And they'll take care of you and if you need to see a specialist they'll create a referral and you have to follow that referral otherwise you might get stuck with a large bill. So some people are comfortable with that it's widely used among the active all active duty members are on prime or primary mode and many of their family members are so it's kind of what they know and are used to and are comfortable with.
00:06:40
Speaker
But as they reach retirement and move into retirement a lot of folks either through choice or through requirement moving to try care select and select is not a managed care program you don't have an assigned pc and you don't have to go to any particular physician first you can choose your own doctor out in town.
00:07:00
Speaker
And choose your own specialist. Tricare doesn't care about referrals. Now, a specialist might want a referral. Like, if I'm going to get medical imaging, I just can't walk in and say, give me an MRI. They're going to want to know why. So the clinic itself will want a referral, but Tricare doesn't manage them. And so it adds a lot of flexibility and it's very easy to use.
00:07:21
Speaker
Now, I mentioned prime remote. This is for active duty members and their families who are not near an MTF.
Comparing Tricare Plans with Commercial Options
00:07:30
Speaker
And if they still want to be in managed care, then they're in prime remote and they might have telemedicine or, you know, consulting remotely. And they do have a PCM where they may not meet face to face and get their care that way and get their referrals like that.
00:07:46
Speaker
Then there's Tricare for life. This is what happens when you turn 65 and you become eligible for Medicare. And at that point, just to add some context, Tricare life didn't always exist. There was a time when you reach 65, you just went into Medicare, period, just like the rest of the US population. And there was
00:08:09
Speaker
A lot of blowback from the retiree community this wasn't what we promised it wasn't what we expected in our retirement years so try care for life was added. Can you sign up for try care for life and you enroll in medicare parts a and b and party has a fee that currently hundred sixty seven dollars a month.
00:08:29
Speaker
But once you do that, all of your care is free. Okay, so Medicare covers the bulk of your care and then Medicare has 20% copayments and Tricare for Life covers that. So stateside, when you're receiving care in the states, you should have no bills at all for any medical care. I'm in that right now. It's been working great. I haven't had to pay a single bill in the last year and a half.
00:08:53
Speaker
Overseas, that's a bit different because Medicare doesn't work overseas. So what happens when you're overseas, Tricare for Life becomes your primary provider and that covers your bill, typically cover 75% and you have a 25% copayment, which is capped at a certain level each year that you'll never exceed like $3,000. So that's a big player once you reach retirement age of 65.
00:09:22
Speaker
For the reserve community, if you are a drilling reservist, such as selected reserves, you can enroll in Tricare Reserve Select.
00:09:32
Speaker
The plans I mentioned so far are very affordable because they're subsidized through tax dollars. We're talking premiums of like 20, $30 a month, very, very cheap. Tricare Reserve Select is not subsidized, so it's considerably more expensive. It kind of rivals the cost of commercial plans, but it's good to check around and compare, and you may find that the Reserve Select is your best deal. And then for those reservists
Regional Tricare Plans and Personal Experiences
00:10:00
Speaker
who retire,
00:10:03
Speaker
Before they reach age 60, that is, they're not yet receiving retired pay. They can enroll in Tricare Retired Reserve, or DRR. That also is not subsidized, so the cost is somewhat higher.
00:10:15
Speaker
Once a reservist reaches age 60, they start collecting their retiree pay, and now they can move into the regular plans of Tricare Prime and Tricare Select, and their entire family can move in as well. And those are quite affordable. For your adult children, that is, they're reaching college age and so forth, they can remain on your plan, Prime or Select, until they reach 21.
00:10:43
Speaker
and they can stay even longer up to age 23 if they are enrolled full-time in college. And what you'll do then for that two-year period is from the college registrar, obtain proof of their enrollment and you send that in and they'll remain on your regular plan.
00:11:00
Speaker
But then they age out at either 21 or 23. They still can remain on Tricare up to 26 through a plan called Tricare Young Adult. Tricare Young Adult has two versions of Prime and Select.
00:11:16
Speaker
And again these are cost a bit higher they're more commensurate with commercial costs because they're not subsidized. So a student at that age they might do well to shop around on the open market or see if their college or university offers health care and compare to what's available through t y and see whatever is the best deal.
00:11:37
Speaker
That is the bulk of it right there. There's a few others. I'll mention the U.S. Family Health Plan. This is at various places around the United States centered around large medical centers, such as in the Puget Sound Pacific Northwest area and around Boston and so forth, where there are large medical research facilities and they run their own plan, which is very much like Prime. It's price like Prime, very affordable.
00:12:05
Speaker
But you are more or less limited to their network of physicians, which will be very strong locally, but not so strong once you travel away. And that's pretty much the scope of it. There's a few odds and ends, but that covers most of them. When I was the commanding officer of the Navy operational support center in Erie, Pennsylvania, which is not a fleet concentration area, and there's no major military base there, so you don't have any military medical facilities.
00:12:33
Speaker
I was, I and my family were on Tricare Prime Remote. And that was from I think 2014 to 17, I think something like that. So I got some experience using Tricare Prime Remote. And now that I'm retired, I'm on Tricare Select. I'm pretty sure. Yeah. Yeah. A lot of people don't know what plan they're in.
00:12:53
Speaker
It's really not easy. So that's why I'm very glad that you're out there. You've got the book out there. You've got your Facebook group, which continues to grow and help many, many people. And just listening to you go through all of those different types of tricare, like I'm just kind of like shrugging my shoulders and like, oh, okay, great. Like all the details and who qualifies, who doesn't, how much does each cost? Yeah. How do you know if there's other options out there? Like you said, some of them are rival commercial.
00:13:21
Speaker
you know, costs. So it's a lot of information out there and to know when there's government entities involved and there's such a vast checklist and qualifier list and open enrollment, which probably what we'll get into next. Yeah. How do you, how do you even
Enrollment and Management of Tricare
00:13:40
Speaker
know? Cause it's, it's very understandable how people get confused.
00:13:43
Speaker
It's a challenge and I started out equally confused. So, you know, on Facebook, for anyone who's on Facebook, there's kind of a dynamic in a group when a new person joins and asks a very basic question and then everyone gets a noise. Oh, not again. This has been asked 20 times every day.
00:14:01
Speaker
We're not like that in our group. Okay. Because that's why we're here. And I remember it wasn't that long ago that I was just overwhelmed and I was moving overseas with my family as a civilian and not sure how to do any of this. So if we get a question, you know, 10 times a day from a new member, we'll answer that question 10 times a day because we're here to educate people.
00:14:22
Speaker
Um, and I don't even start out with like assumed basic knowledge. I'd like to think everyone knows what a PCM or an MTF is and I'll use those acronyms and everyone says, what's a PCM? What's an MTF? Right. Primary care manager, military treatment facility. We spell it out.
00:14:38
Speaker
But then i come to find out that people don't even know what plan there and they don't even know what a plan is. As opposed to a region where you live this comes up all the time and i'll explain. Try care divides the world into three regions there's try care east and try care west which divides up the united states.
00:14:59
Speaker
And then there's strike care overseas, which is everything else, including the U.S. territories. And within those three regions, you can be in prime or select or TYA or, you know, Right Tired Reserve. Each of those regions hosts all of the plans.
00:15:15
Speaker
And so I asked somebody, what plan are you? And I'm in Tricare overseas. This is the 20 times a day one that comes up more. No, you're not enrolled in Tricare overseas. That's where you live. Now, which plan are you in? And they go, well, I don't know. And then we'll help them figure it out because this is even, you know, just getting to the point where we can ask whatever question they've posted. We have to kind of drill down and understand this.
00:15:39
Speaker
So we don't have like this assumed baseline of knowledge within our population because people are at all different levels and a lot of people have been using this a long time and not really understanding what's going on. The greatest example of this is the active duty community
00:15:58
Speaker
who is getting close to retirement that's a very very interesting segment i actually joined a facebook group that was just about that. It was about people who are getting ready to retire in the last two or three years of their military service and what i saw there that you know prior to that time the active duty community is very complacent regarding their health care you go to the mtf they take care of you they write a prescription you get it on. The way out you know the pharmacy go to your car and leave and you're done.
00:16:28
Speaker
Okay, but now they're getting close to retirement and they understand they've heard rumors. It may not be so easy as a retiree or a hospital on base isn't seeing retirees and the anxiety level starts to grow. Then they join our group.
00:16:43
Speaker
And we talk them through it. Here's what you need to do. Of course, you up to yourself and dears, you get a new ID card. If you're kicked out of prime, because a lot of retirees are not allowed to visit an MTF anymore, which means they can't be on prime. This is a decision that's made locally by the commanders at the MTFs. Okay. Based on their capacity to serve, understanding their priority are the active duty and active duty family members.
00:17:08
Speaker
So it can be very uncomfortable. You've used to prime, you've never had to do a claim, never had to like find your own doctor and you're facing this prospect where you got to go out in town and shop around and find a doctor who will see you. And so we talk people through that as well. So our community has all these little sub demographics, people with different concerns. I'm connected with like the
00:17:30
Speaker
The divorced community, former spouses of military members can retain benefits under certain situations. Either transitional benefits to give them time to find new health care or maybe lifetime depending on the details of their marriage and length of marriage and so forth. They have very specific concerns that may be different from the rest of the community. And so we have all these sub currents going on and we try to address them all and stay attuned to the needs of our members.
00:17:58
Speaker
When I was retiring, I remember, at least you can correct me if I'm wrong here, but I believe I had medical coverage up to six months after my official retirement date, and then it went away unless I enrolled into another plan, such as Tricare Select.
00:18:17
Speaker
So I think that enrollment period is kind of a special enrollment period because it's an active duty member going into and transitioning into retirement. That's probably a unique exception, but normally there is
00:18:31
Speaker
or normally there are enrollment periods. Can you talk about that? And does everybody have to do it? Is it something you have to manually do every year? Is it automatic? Why would you change a plan at the end of a year? Can you get into that? Yes, I will. So first of all, we'll talk about the transitional benefits, which is what you experienced at the end of active duty.
00:18:52
Speaker
There is something called tamp which is the transition assistance management program that might be what you were thinking of. It's a transitional period when you're leaving active service and you're not eligible for other tri-care plans or you haven't signed up gives you a hundred eighty days of primer select. Which i believe is free of premiums.
00:19:15
Speaker
So active duty, you may not be paying premiums anyway, but the retiree community is. And so TAMP, that 180 days, you're free of premiums, but you may have copayments on your plan. It's very affordable and a great way to get yourself reestablished.
00:19:33
Speaker
This is another problem that comes up is that to get into TRICARE is a two-step process for, not for active duty, it's more or less automatic, but their family members, the folks that are receiving benefits through their sponsor. So first they got to get into DIRS, the Defense Eligibility Enrollment Reporting System. So all your family members are in DIRS, that is spouse and children. If you have adopted children, you may even have
00:20:01
Speaker
dependent parents if you're providing more than 50% support to a parent or an in-law they can be placed in deers as well. So that's the first step and some people stop there and they think okay they're good but they're not that's you know step one. Step two is to call your regional contractor that is east west or overseas and choose a plan and get yourself signed up. And even then it's not enough people say okay sign me up for select okay you're in select but
00:20:31
Speaker
That's not your family member, you know, you have to include them as well. And so you walk through each family member, one, one, one, there's little Tommy, there's Jane, there's my spouse, okay? Go through them one by one names, birthdays, make sure they're all in there, and everyone is signed up for Tricare.
00:20:45
Speaker
Okay, once you've done all of those things, now you're in a plan. So at that point, nothing changes year to year. You will remain in your plan and you'll stay enrolled until you specifically go in and make a change. But there are times when you might have to get involved. And if you fail to do so, if you need to choose a plan and you don't,
00:21:10
Speaker
Then you kind of fall off the radar and into a status which called dco or direct care only this is a bad place to be when you are dco that means you're not in any plan.
00:21:26
Speaker
And the only care available to you would be to find an MTF that has like space A capacity to take you like on a walk-in basis and they might see you for primary care. But they may not and they may not see you for specialty care either. So that's a really bad spot especially if you're nowhere near an MTF and then you really don't have any options. So you don't want to
00:21:48
Speaker
fall into that hole. Now, why would anyone end up, I just said you don't have to do anything from year to year, why would anyone end up in a direct care only status? Well, you leave active duty and you fail to choose a plan. You have this 180 day temp and it runs out and you haven't done anything, bingo, now you're DCO.
00:22:06
Speaker
and you go to the doctor, you get a bill, you send it in, they say, well, we can't honor this bill, you're stuck with it. Well, why is that? I thought it was enrolled. Oh, you never chose a plan. Something weird that came up, and I will say this was some time ago, 2018, probably 2020. Before then, there was no fee for Tricare Select for retirees. Didn't have to pay a fee. Get it for free every month. You'd have copayments only.
00:22:35
Speaker
Then they said, you know what, we're gonna charge a fee. Now this comes from Congress, by the way. You know, Tricare isn't making this stuff up. So if you're angry, don't get mad at the Tricare guy, and don't even get mad at Tricare, you're right to your congressmen and talk to them, all right? Because that's where all this stuff comes from. So they said, we need to start charging a fee for retirees for select. And the word went out, right? They have your address in Deers, they have your email in Deers, and so they sent notifications. Well, guess what? A lot of people don't keep Deers current.
00:23:04
Speaker
It's an old email address that you're not using anymore. You've moved three times, your mail can't find out, and you didn't get the word. So they started this fee, which at present, I don't know, it's like $30 a month covers your entire family under select. It's very, very reasonable.
Tricare vs. VA Coverage Abroad
00:23:20
Speaker
But if you're not paying it and you were in select, then after kind of a grace period, which was just a few months, boom, you're not in select anymore. You got kicked out and you're DCO.
00:23:31
Speaker
The reason I'm talking about it sounds like ancient history, but there are people that may have gone, you know, four years and haven't tried to use Tricare. They don't know their DCO cause they haven't tried to use it. They may have employer care, you know, through their spouse, employer or whatever it may be. They're going to VA, getting their care there, but then sometime they want to use Tricare and they do it. It might even be a large bill and they send it in. It's rejected. They say, Hey, you're not enrolled. How could that be? I know I had it somewhere. I can't remember, but I know I had it.
00:24:00
Speaker
Uh, no. So you need to know what you're in. You need to know your plan. You need to know your region. So you, that's who you contact when there's problems. And, uh, and then just kind of stay current, even if you're not using it.
00:24:15
Speaker
Just kind of keep current. If I'm getting treated at the VA, do I need TRICARE? If you're getting treated at the VA and your state side, you may not, depending on your VA rating. I'm sorry, I'm not an expert on VA, but above a certain rating, you can get all of your care at the VA. Maybe it's 80% or above. I'm sorry that I forget.
00:24:38
Speaker
But your family might because they're not eligible. There is such a thing as CHAMP VA, which is a VA program to provide medical care to families of veterans, okay? But by definition, you're not eligible for CHAMP VA if you're eligible for Tricare. All right, so for my entire audience, CHAMP VA doesn't apply.
00:25:05
Speaker
Now, notice I said eligible for Tricare. Even if you're eligible and you don't sign up, you still can't be in CHAMPVA because you could have had Tricare if you'd signed up.
00:25:17
Speaker
But so one thing about Tricare, all of these plans that I described, prime and young adult and select, they work worldwide. You can take a vacation in France, you can go on a cruise, you know, you go anywhere. Tricare will cover you. For prime plans, it may just be emergency care only, but for select, it's all types of care. You could do anything, you get your
00:25:40
Speaker
spleen removed, whatever, it doesn't matter, it's going to cover you. But that's not true with VA. So even if you're 100%, you're getting all your care at VA. But when you go overseas, there is something called the Foreign Medical Plan, FMP. This is a VA program. So this is where they will either cover or reimburse you for care overseas.
00:26:04
Speaker
But there's two gotchas. Gotcha number one, you have to enroll in FMP before you use it. It's not just automatic. And secondly, it's only for the conditions that you have a rated disability. Okay, so where you're getting 100% care in the states at a VA clinic, but overseas, it's only for those rated conditions and not 100%. So it would not be the full service care that you're used to when you're when you're out of the USA.
00:26:30
Speaker
We're talking about conditions that you have and that particular VA and what you get for your disability, what VA covers and that, but go back to Tricare. I know even when I was active duty, people would wonder what types of things were covered under Tricare. For example, treatments like braces or Invisalign, treatments like weight loss surgeries, or even cosmetic surgeries for particularly wives and female active duty members.
00:27:00
Speaker
And now you've got all of these other kind of treatments like Wegovy, which is like a weight loss injection for obesity or to combat obesity. Are you familiar of what procedures like that that we might be surprised is actually covered under Tricare? Yeah, I can talk in some generalities here. It does come up in our group a lot. So the overall guidance is that Tricare is for medically necessary care.
00:27:30
Speaker
So like you don't like your nose, you want a nose job, you know, for cosmetic appearances. No, that would not be covered. But if it was due to like clogged nasal passages and it's affecting your breathing, that would be covered. So it's medically necessary care and it should be FDA approved. And if it meets those two criteria, then it's probably approved.
00:27:50
Speaker
Okay but that brings you to this weight loss drug it's a relatively new thing and expensive as well. The short answer is yes it's covered. The long answer is there's a few hurdles you need to cover first.
00:28:06
Speaker
uh, to get to like these brand name, uh, wonder drugs for weight loss. And so some of the hurdles would include, um, you need to be under the care of a licensed weight loss physician, a consultant who's going to talk you through this. You should have tried other lesser drugs that kind of reduce a cholesterol and blood sugar and might have some minor weight loss properties to them and try that. They might require you to go on like Weight Watchers or a controlled program under the
00:28:36
Speaker
care and supervision of your physician for a year. And when that fails to get the results that you want, then they would consider things like this. So these are generalities. I won't say the things that I just said are not true all the time for everybody, but there are some hurdles to clear first.
00:28:56
Speaker
I'm but in terms of medically necessary care i ended up in the emergency room recently i was in new zealand. I'm okay so i have mild allergies in the states of papa claret and or something maybe just once or twice a week and i'm good. I got to new zealand who is over the top and my eyes are swelling up i was hard to breathe it was really bad. And right at christmas time i went into.
00:29:19
Speaker
the emergency room and said, I'm miserable. I can't deal with this. And so they gave me like steroid treatment and stuff that they declared to write up. Uh, and I was good. All right. So of course that would, that would all be honored, but I came back to the States with lingering problems. And I decided my best course was to visit a ENT ear, nose and throat specialist.
00:29:40
Speaker
And I went there and he set me up with referrals to have my vision checked because they were lingering even right now. Now you can see my eyes are a little puffy. This is five months later. Um, I had some eye exam, um, hearing tests because I had fluid in the ears and then an allergist and he did all those pinpricks on my back to see what I was allergic to. And he set me up for a series of injections to try to build back up my immunity. All of these things stemmed from that one incident in New Zealand.
00:30:10
Speaker
I'm writing about this, by the way, in my Facebook group, in my newsletters, I'm kind of sharing this journey because a lot of people are finding it really helpful for them. It's all covered because I am on Tricare for Life and Medicare. I don't have any copayments. I'm not paying a dime. If I was on Select, I would have small copayments, $25 to $50 maybe per visit. Yeah, that's me. Yeah, that adds up.
00:30:39
Speaker
but it's all considered medically necessary. The physicians that I'm seeing here in Hawaii, we have a strong military concentration, so they're used to dealing with tricare beneficiaries. They gotta code it correctly. Like normally, I can't just get an eye exam or a vision test that's not included. Vision care is not included, but because it's linked back to a medical condition, and I reminded the optometrist, please write in the,
00:31:05
Speaker
particular medical code. He said, oh yeah, I know what I'm doing. And he put it in and boom, it's covered. So that's it in a nutshell, just a wide variety of things, anything medically necessary. You'll be good to go.
00:31:19
Speaker
So as
Dental and Vision Care under Tricare
00:31:20
Speaker
a retiree, I believe I'm on Tricare Select. And in addition to just the medical coverage, I have to buy these other plans, which is dental. And if I wanted, I'm not sure if I actually purchased it or not.
00:31:36
Speaker
dental and vision. Yes. So I have, I'm very surprised that when I go twice a year to get a cleaning, I still get a bill for like 119 bucks. I'm like, why am I even paying for this? Dental cannot be that much. I can't broadly say this was a mistake, but, uh, this year I enrolled in that same program and I kind of regret it because I'm not getting the value back, you know, commensurate to what I'm paying in monthly premiums.
00:32:03
Speaker
For some families, you have a larger family or you have a lot of dental needs. They may find it worthwhile, but I'm not. So what you're describing is called Fed VIP. And the website is benefits, B-E-N-E-F-E-D-S. I can, you know, we'll share the Lincoln with this interview. But that's not part of Tricare. Fed VIP is a vision and dental care that was created for
00:32:32
Speaker
the GS population, federal civil servants, and it was later expanded to include military retirees, but it is separate from Tricare. So it's optional enrollment. So just like you have dental and vision care through an employer, this is being offered to the retiree community.
00:32:53
Speaker
I will kind of quickly run through, there are three different dental plans that come up in this conversation. The first is for active duty members themselves. The 100% free, all the active duty members get all the dental they need, no cost. That's called the active duty dental plan. Okay, but that doesn't cover their families.
00:33:14
Speaker
The active duty family members enroll in the Tricare dental plan and that is offered through Tricare. It's very affordable. Most families in the states probably sign up. But then the retiree community can't use either one of those and then they go to the Fed VIP or the benefits site, choose a plan. This is like from Aetna and Blue Cross Blue Shield and Delta Dental.
00:33:36
Speaker
Depending on your zip code i don't have a wide variety of plans that are offered and you choose the one high deductible deductible whatever makes sense to you. Typically my family we have self insured along the way specially overseas or dental is so much cheaper and i had like.
00:33:55
Speaker
implant done, you know, I had to extraction and implant and bone graft. I paid all that out of pocket for like 20% of what it would have cost me in the States. This was in Thailand. Um, and the insurance wouldn't have covered very much at all. Um, doing that in the States, you would want insurance, but if it's just cleaning and, uh, you know, X-rays and whatever, uh, you might do just as well to pay out of pocket and not even bother with insurance.
00:34:23
Speaker
but then you have to assume the risk. You know, if you have a major dental that you didn't expect, all of a sudden you're uninsured and you got problems. So if, let me give you two scenarios and maybe you can answer this. If I'm a parent and I've got a kid coming up to those early teenage years, and let's say first I'm an active duty military member and as my child's braces covered, and if I'm retired and I have a child coming up to that age, are my child's braces covered?
00:34:54
Speaker
I'll tell you, I'm not so strong. What you're describing is the Tricare Dental Plan, TDP, that covers the family members of an active duty military.
00:35:09
Speaker
It is covered somewhat, but I don't know the deductibles and the copayments. It's found on tricare.mil. You can drill down and search for dental benefits strictly for that plan. The tricare dental plan will cover it there, but I'd be guessing if I tried to give an answer. Okay, let me throw another one out there. Okay. Is IVF covered by any of these insurance plans?
00:35:32
Speaker
Fertility services have very limited coverage, and my understanding of them is strictly for active duty families, particularly if the infertility condition is caused or aggravated due to military service. So if either husband or wife had an injury that affects the ability to conceive, then a wide variety of fertility services would be covered.
00:36:02
Speaker
Other than that, almost not at all. But I will share a loophole that has been
Resources and Community Support
00:36:10
Speaker
beneficial to some. I know they offered it here in Hawaii and others like San Diego have mentioned it before. And this is where, by the way, if you go to the MTF and you ask for fertility services, they'll say, well, you know, we can't provide that for retiree families. And they'll recommend some clinics out in town that you can see, but it's all out of pocket.
00:36:31
Speaker
And this can cost like $20,000 to $40,000 per try. And it might take multiple tries to become pregnant. So it's very expensive. But what they did here at Tripler in Hawaii, they had the lab that they recommended. And they said, well, once a month, our military doctor who specializes this will go down to that civilian lab and civilian clothes and provide her medical services for free.
00:36:58
Speaker
And then all you're doing is covering the lab costs, the facility costs. And this ended up dropping the price of IVF from like, I'll say roughly $20,000 down to more like 6,000 or maybe less, but somewhere around that per try.
00:37:17
Speaker
and within the realm of possibility that families might actually be able to afford this. So it's worth asking about at your local MTF. You can join our Facebook group as Tricare around the world and talk about that. We have people literally living in every geographic region, every corner of the country and around the world who can give advice about what's available locally. And you can find that a great resource.
00:37:43
Speaker
Let me throw another one out. Can a beneficiary expect to get coverage for a procedure for eye correction like LASIK? LASIK is not covered. Now, active duty, I would say probably is if you meet the right criteria, but it's not covered for anyone else. What you'll find under the Fed VIP vision plans may offer like discount programs. They'll offer you 20% of their participating locations.
00:38:12
Speaker
Um, other eye care is, and one of my greatest success stories is I actually ran an experiment on myself in 2020. Uh, we'd settled in Bangkok or in Thailand, I would say unexpectedly because we more or less got trapped there by, by COVID. We couldn't go anywhere. Uh, so I want to see, okay, I'm really learning about tri-care now. I want to use as much care as I can where before I had been avoiding it, because it was so confusing to me.
00:38:42
Speaker
And I use it enough that I got up and reached the cap. That is a catastrophic cap limits your out of pocket costs for the year. And those days it was $3,000. My goal was by the end of the year to have lens implants in my eyes, because I was like in a pre-cataract condition. And so they, they remove your lens and put artificial lens. I did this. I ended up doing this on December 21 of that year, you know, the deadline being 31 and then the cap resets and I would have to pay the whole thing out of.
00:39:12
Speaker
and I'd have a huge copayment. But because I had reached my cap, I not only got it done by Tricare, I had no copayments at all. It was completely free to me. So the whole story of this is that medical-related conditions for the eye are covered, like cataract treatment, other types of things, ophthalmological care. But vision treatment, per se, glasses, contacts, and stuff are not. If you have the vision plan, of course, those are covered.
00:39:42
Speaker
but I don't know of anyone that's covering Lasik. I appreciate you going through some of those details. Yeah, you put it in such a way that's easy to understand and know where to go, whether it be your local MTF or your Facebook group to find more ways to navigate that. In your own journey, you spent some time traveling, and this is, from what I understand, how you came up with the idea of sharing this information with others is through your own experiences, traveling abroad.
00:40:10
Speaker
Can you discuss your, not only just your Tricare experience, but can you describe your travels abroad and how Tricare played a role in that, in a broader picture of your own financial journey? Oh, absolutely.
00:40:27
Speaker
I do participate in a lot of financial Facebook groups, so military and non-military. And one thing that I've really gained an appreciation for, and because we have TRICARE, we don't think about this much, but a lot of people who do not have a military connection
00:40:44
Speaker
They're forced to keep working until age 65, even if they don't want to, just because they need the healthcare benefits through their employer. So you may find yourself at 59 or 60, you know, financially prepared to retire. And so you look at, you know, market based insurance.
00:41:05
Speaker
is like 1900 a month for some families. And it's like, they can't pay that. And then this huge deductible, $11,000 deductible before your plan even starts to contribute. And so they say, well, we can't afford that. And so they just work.
00:41:20
Speaker
But with Tricare, that's taken out of the equation. If you find yourself financially able to retire, you can do so. And you've got your Tricare, your healthcare built in worldwide. So I went through much of this same deliberation myself as I was in my late fifties, um, starting to do these forecasts, these what if scenarios can I retire early? And I use all kinds of, you know, planning tools and things. And,
00:41:48
Speaker
I finally came to the conclusion, yeah, about age 58 or so, we can, but not in Hawaii. You know, the cost of living is just too much. So I said, what we can do is move overseas, find ourselves a low cost of living situation, retire, and then we can come back to Hawaii in a few years. And that's what ended up happening. So we have a townhouse here in Hawaii and we sold everything. We sold our car and rented the place out.
00:42:16
Speaker
And we found ourselves a position in Japan. It was actually through a Christian missionary organization. They needed caretakers to live on site at a retreat camp up in the mountains.
00:42:28
Speaker
and said, perfect, we're the family for you. And we went through all the screening on that and we ended up way up in the mountains as caretakers of these cabins. And then Christian groups within Japan would come up either for congregational retreats or pastor retreats or conferences and things. And we'd take care of the housekeeping and the landscaping and so forth and had free housing thrown in.
00:42:52
Speaker
So that was a really wonderful experience and we did it twice with two organizations. Uh, there's opportunities out there for people who are interested, but I got thinking, you know, and I'm putting my family at risk because I don't know what to do in case of a medical emergency. We had declined the Japanese healthcare because we were in country considered to be on a volunteer basis. We weren't being paid in Japan for work in Japan. So we weren't in the Japanese healthcare system.
00:43:21
Speaker
So i decided to be responsible to me not to understand in depth what to do you break my leg or whatever we get really sick. So i started like going through the tricare website trying to figure this out and i found them incomprehensible i'll tell someone if you've never done this.
00:43:39
Speaker
like figure out which website you need to go into to manage your personal account and your claims and how to create an account and log in. That alone can take weeks and I'm not exaggerating. That can take weeks just to figure that out. It took me weeks and I see a lot of people on our group.
00:43:58
Speaker
It's incredibly obtuse. Now, by the way, I had something to scare anyone away. Learning how to do all this stuff is hard, but once you've learned,
00:44:11
Speaker
then it's not hard anymore. It's just like no one's there to teach you. And that's the gap that I'm trying to fill. We provide the roadmap. We show you how to do these things. My book walks you through it. And so I actually say in the book, Tricare is not hard to use, right? Learning to use Tricare is difficult and we fill that gap.
00:44:31
Speaker
So i started trying to go through these websites i got so confused i said i will join a facebook group and someone will explain and i search and search and search. Guess what there was no facebook group now there's the official tricare facebook page run by your records in washington but. They're not gonna answer personal questions there that's not their role they tell you what website to go to which i've already tried.
00:44:54
Speaker
So I couldn't find one and so I started my own. I thought if I could find 50 or 100 people that are doing this expat lifestyle like me, we can compare notes and help each other.
John's Tricare Guidebook and Community Role
00:45:03
Speaker
So I started it.
00:45:05
Speaker
And I started advertising it in the SpaceA website, you know, where you travel military flights around the world. And this is where all the people were saying, you can't use tri-care overseas. That was the common belief at the time. And I would go, you can, you can. Like, I'm not really sure how, but I know you can. They call me, I can't tell you what they call me. This is, you know, family broadcast here, but.
00:45:28
Speaker
I was called a liar was put it at that and so i started my own facebook group and instead of telling people that you can use. Try care around the world i would just share a link to my group and the people would come and believe me because now i have my own group and suddenly i'm the authority.
00:45:45
Speaker
Add within days we had a hundred people and a thousand and you know ten thousand and we're up to like fifteen thousand. We actually have a series of five groups we have tricare in the philippines which has its own rules we have tricare in thailand. Because i have a real affinity i've lived there before we have tricare in germany because they have a unique population centered around mtf that you don't find another countries of the world.
00:46:08
Speaker
And then we have Tricare for new moms and moms to be, which focus on questions of fertility and pregnancy and prenatal care and infant care, that sort of thing. So we've got like 20,000 members across all of these groups and we deal with these questions. So I started out with basic knowledge
00:46:33
Speaker
And I hadn't been running that group for like a week when someone posted and said, Hey, we're in Belize. And my husband got on this catastrophic motorbike accident, knocked his head. He's in the emergency room. What do we do? Is anyone going to pay?
00:46:45
Speaker
I'm thinking, man, I'm just learning this stuff myself. But I got really serious and I said, here I am. I kind of, you know, hang my shingle out and said, well, you can do trike, Aaron. I better be ready to answer tough questions like this. I took it very, very seriously. And so we walked her through it, told her who to contact, how to get it set up. Her husband was covered, all of this. And it hasn't stopped since then. We're getting these tough questions every day, but now I'm confident.
00:47:13
Speaker
within our groups we have moderators help around the group there all around the world there in germany. In the states in thailand mexico and then myself here in hawaii so we cover the span of time zones. And one of us is always online this was not accidental we set it up on purpose so when a really catastrophic emergency comes in we've got expert knowledge right there to help people walk them through it and get them in there.
00:47:41
Speaker
But over years, I've been doing this like five years now, I've gotten really, really good at it. During COVID, I wrote the book because I couldn't do much of anything else. And that was 2020 when I was getting all this care. I was doing like getting a CPAP in Thailand and the overnight hospital stays. I was getting mental health counseling because I was going batty. Got my eyes taken care of. I had to get a second opinion for the eyes and then did the lens implants. All of this was in 2020.
00:48:10
Speaker
And it was purposeful. I wanted to get good at this stuff. I wanted to clear my backlog of care, the things that I had been putting off, and all of that went into the book. So we just covered this vast amount of knowledge over the years. Well, I do appreciate your efforts to help demystify Tricare for the rest of us. I think it's great that you've got
00:48:31
Speaker
such a metered approach to how you're supporting people across the world, the different time zones as far as the moderators for your Facebook group. That's something I, that's kind of new to me, but I like the idea of that. Someone who thinks like service-based and information, how do you share it? I think that's pretty cool that you do that. And I like that you've taken this on. Right now as we're having this conversation, you're 66 years old, you're retired, living a good life in Hawaii. You don't need to do this.
00:48:57
Speaker
but you enjoy doing it. It's rewarding in some way. I don't even, I can't imagine it being like too financially rewarding or like the time trade off. It might be somewhat financially rewarding, but you found this passion later in your life through your own experiences and desire to help others.
00:49:15
Speaker
And that's commendable. That's something to be said for that. So I appreciate it. And thank you very much. I know you've probably been told many times throughout your life, thank you for your service, but it refers to your 17 years as a Naval officer, not necessarily however many seven years or four or five years now as the tri-care expert or the tri-care guy, as you know. Yeah, thank you, David.
00:49:42
Speaker
This path itself was never predetermined. I didn't set out to do this. I was living in Japan and I wanted to get good at it. Then I wanted to find like-minded people. Then I started a Facebook group. The path has revealed itself step-by-step at a time. I remember there in COVID, in lockdown, we got to Thailand for a month because I had finished all that work that I was doing in Japan and it came to an end. That was January 2020.
00:50:10
Speaker
And the first country that got COVID outside of China was Thailand. And so we went into this lockdown that I never saw coming. But I did the math. I mean, I'm an analytical, mathematical guy. And I did all the exponential equations. And I said, you know what? This is going to get worse and worse and worse on a global scale for quite some time.
Mental Health Coverage and Personal Stories
00:50:30
Speaker
And I don't want to go into hibernation and come out of this lockdown no better than I went in. I want to do something of value, something of lasting value.
00:50:40
Speaker
And I wasn't sure what, but then boom, the idea of a book, my wife had been pushing me to write for the longest time, but she thought I would be right. Uh, fiction, you know, a novel, you know, military intrigue or whatever. Uh, and I'd always resist, but the idea of writing a book about tri-care really, really appealed to me.
00:50:58
Speaker
And so that was COVID's contribution to this community and really allowed us to kind of reach out to a lot more people. So I do appreciate your words. We talked some about resources, but as a recap, could you just give, I mean, I hate to say there might be like 30 resources. I'm not asking you for 30. We talked about your book. That's, I believe you said you're going to be updating pretty soon, but it's already available. It's been available on Amazon.
00:51:25
Speaker
You got your facebook group right there beautiful beautiful. Is that is that what it got you going bad writing the book cuz I've I've worked on writing a book before too and it kind of does number on you. No no the book was probably my path back to sanity hit me some purpose.
00:51:42
Speaker
No, I'll tell you what it is, truthfully, was just deep seated issues. I don't want to get too dark here, you know, but stemming back to the stress you get in a military service, both family stress, professional stress being deployed, carrying out with you in civilian life to where it's messing up your brain. To me, it would result in lashing out in anger when no anger is warranted, okay, to people around me that don't deserve to be mad at.
00:52:12
Speaker
And I was not dealing well with that. And this was coming out in early 2020 before the lockdown was quite apparent. I found a counselor in Bangkok, an American who was licensed to practice there. Tricare covered it. And it helped a lot. I just got like five or six sessions before he had to stop seeing people because of COVID. And that five or six was enough to give me coping mechanisms to really, really dial it down.
00:52:39
Speaker
And knowing now, you know, I didn't know at the time we were about to go into lockdown for 18 months. It was very severe in Thailand, very strict. My family would not have tolerated me for those 18 months, you know, in a small vacation condo and all that time if I had not learned these coping mechanisms. So that was probably one of the greatest things that Tricare has done for me.
00:53:04
Speaker
Um, but I did find a couple of cafes that were able to do the social spacing and they remained open during COVID. And, uh, and so I would go there every day, get a cup of coffee, sit there with my book, you know, all the websites, not my book on my computer, going through the websites, researching, contacting people and putting this book together in a very, very.
00:53:24
Speaker
step-by-step methodical way explaining what are plans, what are regions, who are all these contractors, what's an MTF, what's a PCM, that's chapter one. And then what's covered, who's covered, who can you see, how do you file a claim, what paperwork do you have to collect,
00:53:43
Speaker
What do you do when you're not getting paid back? You want to put in a complaint or an appeal of some sort. You know, in the end, it's got it all. Now you asked, where do you cover all these resources? I would refer people right to my website. I've kind of consolidated it there for convenience. I don't promote the website yet because it's kind of clumsy, but it's there. It is thetricareguy.com. All one word, thetricareguy.com.
00:54:12
Speaker
And the two things you'll find there, um, I better bring it up. I haven't looked at it in a while, but the first thing is I have a list of resources, uh, like official government websites and things like that, uh, with links and what you're going to find in these places. Yeah. You click resources, um, try carry east, west, overseas. They're all there.
00:54:38
Speaker
One that I'll mention is really great is the MHS nurse advice line. MHS is the Military Health System. They have a toll-free number for the nurse advice line 24-7. Anyone in TRICARE can pick up the phone and call them.
00:54:54
Speaker
and you'll get two things. First of all, a trained nurse who can give medical advice, okay, because I don't give medical advice and your regional contractors won't give medical advice, but they will on the MHS nurse advice. Based on your symptoms, they will advise you what to do.
00:55:10
Speaker
But secondly, because they work for the military health system, they know tricare inside and out. So they can advise you about your plan as well and what the appropriate care is and how it works. So you'll find that on the website and it's really, really great stuff.
00:55:26
Speaker
The second thing that's on thetricareguy.com are all of my particular resources. I have five Facebook groups, not one. There's Tricare around the world. I got it for Germany, Thailand, the Philippines, and then for new moms and moms
Future of Tricare and Closing Remarks
00:55:40
Speaker
to be.
00:55:41
Speaker
I have a newsletter. You can write on my homepage. You can put in your email address and get signed up for my newsletter. We send out offers and discounts. You get the book at a discount on all kinds of things that we're doing.
00:55:56
Speaker
And then a youtube channel which isn't quite as polished and professional as yours but it's there and we talk to all the different elements of try care. And that's a great resource i started just recently doing something called try care guy one on one and if you want to get a private session with me.
00:56:14
Speaker
That is, I'll consult face-to-face with you and your spouse, talk about either your specific issue or problem you're having, or just give kind of an overview, introductory explanation for your family, tailored to where you live and what plans you're on, the age of your kids. I can do that too. So that's a brand new thing that we're doing. So we have all kinds of services that are available, but the best place to find them all is thetricareguide.com.
00:56:40
Speaker
Well, you're definitely in the know. And being the TRICARE guy who is always in the know, are you aware of any emerging trends or upcoming changes to TRICARE that beneficiaries should be aware of in the next year or coming years?
00:56:56
Speaker
Well, I mean, there's always the effect of inflation, you know, and so premiums go up the monthly fee and then deductibles go up. That's kind of a slow and steady thing. I do steer clear of entertaining rumors, you know, or, you know, possible things that could happen.
00:57:13
Speaker
because we get everybody spun up for no reason at all. As a, for instance, this CBO, the Congressional Budget Office, every year they issue a report on ways that Congress can save money for the American taxpayer. We'll save money
00:57:31
Speaker
is their code word for cutting benefits, right? Or charging more for what you're getting. And so every year the CBO has all these catastrophic things about Tricare, which I'm not even going to repeat here, because I've been seeing that five, six, seven years in a row, the same things are there. No congressman has raised their hand says, yeah, that sounds like a great idea. And then they don't implement it.
00:57:52
Speaker
But everyone gets excited and stressed out about it. So I don't see that. So the answer is no. What I see is a steady state. There has been a trend, a regrettable trend, and this goes back probably 10 to 15 years. I'm not going to blame any particular political party for this because I try not to be partisan.
00:58:13
Speaker
But the military health system was set on this roadmap of downsizing the staff at the MTFs, like substantial downsizing, maybe like 13% cut in staffing. And this is why we're seeing retirees push more and more off base, even active duty family members being pushed off base into select out in town.
00:58:35
Speaker
Because the MTFs are becoming more and more restricted in their ability to serve their core populations. This is not their fault. Okay. It comes from Washington. Everyone there is to blame equally. I'm not going to point fingers at anybody.
00:58:49
Speaker
But I did hear recently, they realized they went too far. They, not the military medical community, the Beltway people. Maybe we took this too far. Let's look at building it back up. So hopefully this downsizing, which got put on hold during COVID, otherwise the cuts would be even more catastrophic right now than they were intended to be, it got put on hold. They declared an end to COVID and the drawdowns continued like last year.
00:59:18
Speaker
And I see it like bottoming out. And maybe, maybe it'll start reversing and getting back up and being more open to expanded population on base.
00:59:30
Speaker
Put that in your rumor mill, I don't know, but I hear talk about that. But beyond that, I think it's kind of at a steady state at this point and things are more or less stable. Okay. And we'll thank you for sharing that. And we'll also include the resources that you mentioned and to the YouTube description and the podcast show notes so that if you're interested in knowing where to go or you don't know where to enroll or a phone number to call,
00:59:54
Speaker
Just check out the show notes and hopefully we'll get everything that you're looking for in there. John, thank you so much. You're a seasoned expert who've dedicated your efforts to serving the military community with TRICARE information.
01:00:08
Speaker
and through comprehensive education and personalized consulting. I thank you very much. And I hope this reaches a number of people and we can get that Facebook group of viewers to 20,000 and getting more importantly, that's indicative of getting this valuable information out there to the people who need it. Anything more do you want to add before we close out?
01:00:27
Speaker
No, that's pretty much it. You know, I'm both pleased and surprised that we have a 20,000 following, but remember this total population is 10 million. So we're just scratching the surface and all we can do is reach the people that we can find and hopefully others will refer them to our services and kind of draw them in.
01:00:47
Speaker
My book is a great starting point for these resources. Facebook, all of that is free. And I really, really hope that we'll continue to spread the word. So thank you, David. It's been great talking to you. I hope to have you on again soon. John, thank you very much for coming and chatting with me. And thank you all for watching and listening.