TRICARE Liens
TRICARE applies to either retired or active-duty military. It is their private health insurance. Their right of recovery is limited to third party claims per 42 U.S.C. § 2651. This right of recovery is simply that. It is not a lien.
Personal Injury Tricare Liens-No Medpay
They may make the argument pursuant to 10 U.S.C. § 1095 that Med Pay is in effect a third party payer and therefore they can go against the Med Pay recovery. My response to that is that Virginia Med Pay is a contract between the injured party and the insurer that allows for a windfall to the injured party and the government has no right to step into that contract. In addition Virginia Med Pay is neither primary nor secondary coverage but again is just a windfall to the injured party to the extent that their medical bills have been paid by TRICARE or health insurance.
Attorney’s Fees
The plaintiff’s attorneys’ fees cannot be calculated based upon the TRICARE lien amount. 42 U.S.C. § 2651 et seq. That is, the lien amount must be deducted from the total settlement or judgment and then the attorneys’ fees are calculated on that lesser amount.
Dealing with TRICARE is difficult. One means of contact is: Humana Military, P.O. Box 740062, Louisville, KY 40201, Fax: (800) 439-7482, HMHSRoutineCorrespondence@humana.com
From this source, the communication will be sent to the particular uniformed service that governs.
There are several other blogs on this site dealing with different types of liens:
