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Ranchers.net

I was a bit stunned,.. all you hear these days is how mental health and drug treatment means so much to the liberals and any cut causes another heroin overdose and it is all Trumps fault... but this new change can't have just come about over night.



In March, Brooks and behavioral healthcare therapists caring for beneficiaries across TRICARE’s 10-state South Region received new “contract packets” inviting them to continue to see their patients but as members of new behavioral healthcare network, this one run directly by Humana Military and with a revised fee deal.

The new “payment arrangement,” Brooks was startled to discover, would have her accepting a “30 percent” discount off TRICARE maximum allowable charges. By law, the TRICARE maximums can’t exceed Medicare rates.

Brooks reviewed her current TRICARE contract, signed a few years ago with Humana sub-contractor ValueOptions, and found she already was accepting 10 percent less than Medicare pays. The new contract, to take effect Jan. 1, would have Brooks accept another 20 percent cut on her therapy services.

“By reducing reimbursement rates so drastically,” Brooks warned, “Humana is creating a situation where working for TRICARE becomes an entry-level therapy position.

For “a trauma therapist working with the military community, trust is a very big issue,” Brooks added. “Many of my clients with PTSD have told me that previous therapy was not effective because they were sent to a young person with no military experience whom they could not relate to” and the dropout rate was high.

Brooks is skeptical. More than 90 percent of her patients, she said, have military ties, almost 80 percent of those have PTSD. Therapists most likely to have succeed in treating them, she said, “have worked with the community long enough to develop a cultural competency. With time, they become familiar with the unique environment, can speak the language — where acronyms abound — and really understand that ‘duty, honor, country’ is not just a slogan to these individuals.”

cuts are needed and I believe they can be made but our vets are not the place to start.

start with the 20 something criminal who has never held a job on Medicaid/obmamacare standing at the methadone clinic every morning waiting for his/her/it's free fix... and when the liberals whine ask them why they allowed this.
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