Guard crowd airs health fears

A crowd of about 50 people, many confused by the strange new world of military medical plans, gathered Thursday night at the National Guard armory in Post Falls to discuss health care issues for local Guard members called to active duty in Iraq.

The consensus, when a sometimes-lively panel discussion ended after 2½ hours, seemed to be yes, it’s complicated and yes, there have been problems specific to North Idaho. But the Tri-Care health plan is going to make sure everyone gets the treatment they need.

A panel of military health specialists spent three days making town hall presentations in Idaho. The one in Post Falls was the final and best-attended by far. A presentation in Boise drew about 30 people and one in Idaho Falls eight.

The hot issue locally has been a lack of doctors willing to take new patients under Tri-Care. And there has been a surge of families seeking health care providers after nearly 300 citizen soldiers in the 116th Idaho National Guard’s Combat Engineers Battalion were mobilized to active duty this spring. They’re training in Texas for deployment to Iraq.

With one spouse deployed, “Most families are losing their employer health care coverage,” Capt. Daniel Wasneechak, a Tri-Care specialist from Virginia, said.

Tri-Care, designed to cover active-duty soldiers, is meant to fill the void.

Wasneechak and others acknowledged the lack of available health care providers was a key issue in North Idaho, one not faced elsewhere in the state. The panelists met with a large group of health care providers earlier Thursday in Coeur d’Alene, he said.

“Their main concerns were lack of timely payment on claims and lack of adequate compensation. Those perceptions were true three or four years ago,” Wasneechak said. Most claims today are paid within 30 days, he said.

Another confusion came with Tri-Care signing with a new contractor, Tri-West, to run the health plan in Western states this June, just as the largest deployment of Idaho Guard soldiers since the Vietnam War was hitting full stride.

The hopeful words and promises of wrinkles being ironed out were met with skepticism by people in the audience.

When panelists waved a sheet that showed 170 health care providers available in North Idaho, for instance, one woman related her four-year quest for a female doctor in Coeur d’Alene who would take her under Tri-Care.

“I don’t know about this 170,” she said, “but I can’t find a doctor.”

This anecdote and others like it were met with note-taking and promises to look into the problems.

By the end of the meeting, many people seemed willing to give Tri-Care and Tri-West a chance.

Luke Maas, whose wife is a local physician, said the practice was swamped with about 150 new patients since April. Dealing with Tri-Care strained the small, five-member office staff, who experienced long waits on the telephone and complicated paperwork.

“It was impossible to deal with Tri-Care,” he said. Maas noted improvements in the system, adding “We want to provide care to people in the service.”

Mariann Stam, who has a husband deployed and kids at home, said she was glad the panelists made the trip. She is a member of the Post Falls armory’s family readiness team and said that now, at least, the women in that group have a better understanding of how to make the system work, they have phone numbers, and can spread the word to other spouses.

Understanding Tri-Care is like understanding any health plan, said Don Rietz, health benefits adviser from Fairchild Air Force Base. Learning how it works before you need it eases frustrations in a crisis, he said.

Any health plan is complicated, Maas said, but this one “comes with another layer of bureaucracy.”