Hawai'i troop deployments affecting medical coverage

By Dan Nakaso
Advertiser Staff Writer

As many as 2,300 Hawai'i National Guard members and their families will lose their private medical coverage and switch to military healthcare while the soldiers are on active duty, bound for Iraq.

Once activated, Guard members receive military healthcare, and their families are eligible for treatment at Hawai'i military bases or through the Department of Defense's Tricare health system, which includes private physicians throughout the Islands.

Enrollments in Hawai'i's two major healthcare plans, HMSA and Kaiser Permanente Hawai'i, have not seen any significant changes in recent months with the Guard activated. And officials at both organizations do not anticipate any change in rates or coverage through losing Guard members and their families.

The biggest change likely will be the inconvenience for Guard families who may have to switch doctors.

The transition actually has benefited some Guard families, such as Kim McGerald, who will save $268 per month by canceling her HMSA plan and switching to the free Tricare system.

McGerald, who teaches computer skills at Sunset Elementary School, has been covered by HMSA and Kaiser, and switched back and forth whenever they raised her rates.

"I don't mind changing again to Tricare," she said. "I go where I can save money, and I can choose from their network of doctors."

Her husband, Sgt. Sean McGerald, has his medical needs provided by the Army. For Kim, it means she and her 10-year-old son may have to adjust to new doctors. But she feels the inconvenience is more than made up by the savings.

"If I had any kind of major health issues where I had to see my doctor on a regular basis,

I probably wouldn't have switched," she said. "I'm not nervous about it. They have assigned me a doctor at Schofield (Barracks) and I will probably look around to see if any doctors I've had in the past are on the Tricare network."

Maj. Chuck Anthony, spokesman for the Hawai'i Air and Army National Guard, believes that most private physicians in Hawai'i accept Tricare coverage. "It's highly likely that if somebody wanted to continue to see their family doctor, they would probably get to under Tricare," Anthony said.

State Insurance Commissioner J.P. Schmidt has not heard of any complaints from military families about the switch to military health coverage. Schmidt also hopes to prevent future problems when the Guard soldiers finish their active military duty and return to their old jobs and civilian health plans.

In June, Schmidt wrote a letter to all 965 insurance companies registered to do business in Hawai'i saying he expected them to resume coverage for Guard soldiers for health, auto and professional liability insurance without penalties, as if there had been no interruption in the plan.

"I basically said, 'Be nice to our boys,' " Schmidt said. "A large portion of our population has done their patriotic duty to sign up for the National Guard. So I wanted to make sure that the insurance companies treated them fairly."

The two-page letter uses words such as "requesting," but Schmidt said in an interview that his office is prepared to sanction insurance companies that make it harder or more expensive for Guard soldiers to resume their plans.

"If we get a complaint, we will investigate," Schmidt said. "We can take disciplinary action."

Reach Dan Nakaso at dnakaso@honoluluadvertiser.com or at 525-8085.