MOAA sent a Jan. 20 letter to the president asking for swift action in many areas.  In it, MOAA urges the incoming administration to consider taking up several issues and working with military and veterans service organizations in a collaborative manner to affect these important changes. MOAA looks forward to helping the administration during the transition by providing the necessary background information support needed to successfully achieve its goals moving forward.

You can read the full letter at this link:

https://www.moaa.org/uploadedfiles/biden-100-days.pdf

You’ve probably noticed that there have been a lot of Medicare Advantage commercials on television lately.  Shane Ostrom from MOAA recently addressed this topic in the MOAA eNewsletter.  Read his article here:

www.moaa.org/publications-and-media/news

There may be a good reason for military retires to explore a Medicare Advantage plan but for most retirees, the regular (government managed) Medicare program combined with Tricare for Life should be more than adequate to cover all of your medical needs.  If you decide a commercial Medicare Advantage plan is right for you, be sure you know how it will work with TRICARE pharmacy benefits (some plans negatively impact that benefit) and be sure you ask if it is PPO style or a HMO style plan.  HMO style plans may restrict where you go for treatment and who you can see.  Finally, as pointed out in Shane’s article, not all Medicare Advantage plans work well with Tricare for Life.

Congress enacted changes to the Survivor Benefit Plan (SBP) that will eventually eliminate the offset for surviving spouses who are also receiving Dependency and Indemnity Compensation (DIC) from the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA).  The changes will take place in three phases.

• January 1, 2021 begins the first phase.  In 2021, surviving spouse SBP annuity payments issued by DFAS will be reduced (offset) by no more than two-thirds of the amount of DIC (issued by the VA) rather than by the entire amount of DIC, even though eligible surviving spouses will continue to receive the full amount of DIC from the VA.
• Beginning January 1, 2022, the second phase, surviving spouse SBP annuity payments will be reduced (offset) by no more than one-third of the amount of DIC (issued by the VA) rather than by the entire amount of DIC, even though eligible surviving spouses will continue to receive the full amount of DIC from the VA.
• On January 1, 2023, the SBP-DIC offset will be fully eliminated.  That means, beginning in 2023, SBP payments will no longer be offset by DIC.

For more details and frequently asked questions, see the DFAS special SBP-DIC News webpage: http://go.usa.gov/xGfqd

In addition, the December 2020 issue of Military Officer magazine has an article on page 28 outlining the phase-out plan.