VA's quiet plan to widen private care with TRICARE stirs ire

I've given considerable thought to that whole concept, before my disability, I did clrtkdhipd SNF residency at VA for doctoral level allied health, we shut my license off sevl yrs ago for the disability rules. However, being SD V S grew handles military in any event, SD well ad possibly vice versa, I think, on occasion, I really can't find fault either. SD had also been mentioned on here. Further, the USPHS clinics for the reservations and federal prisons, which USPHS also handles, though little known, I think, could also be added in, the concept does strike me as being at least fairly efficient, if nothing else, you know?

This is not merging VA Care with TRICARE, it would be merging referrals through CHOICE with TRICARE. It would eliminate A LOT of overhead. There are currently 5 different contractors providing the referral and bill processing between the two programs. HealthNet and Triwest each have 2 different contracts, one for TRICARE and one for CHOICE. They have different call centers/claim professionals working on the two different programs. If they were merged, a single system for each of those could handle appointments/referrals/billing for either program.

Many of us in the CVSO realm have suggested doing something similar or merging CHOICE with CHAMPVA.

So long as they don't change the rules for CHOICE, 40 miles or 30 days, it is a no-brainer to me. Even then if smart changes are made to the rules it wouldn't be bad either.

I am not sure at this point if this would be good or bad, but I am sure that initially it would create plenty of confusion.