Advocacy · 2007
TRICARE Providers
HB 3201. Bringing doctors to rural Guard families.
2006. A Guard family in rural Oregon held a TRICARE card — the military health plan — and almost nowhere to use it. About 45 providers outside Portland took it.
OWVA requested HB 3201 in 2007: tax breaks for providers who joined TRICARE — two years of TRICARE income free of state tax, and a one-time credit. The bill became the session’s large tax package, carrying a credit for physicians at the Oregon Veterans’ Home and one for Youth Challenge staff with it.
Governor Kulongoski signed it July 31, 2007. It made the front page of the Guard’s own newspaper. It is Oregon Laws 2007, chapter 843.
That August, a TRICARE news release credited the Oregon War Veterans Association, with the state’s leadership, for helping grow Oregon’s TRICARE network 35% since fall 2004 — more than 9,000 providers serving 65,000 beneficiaries.
In rural Oregon, about 45 providers in 2006 became about 2,000 by 2008. est. Today 10,000–12,000 serve about 97,000 veterans and family members statewide. est.
Sources: HB 3201 (2007), Oregon Legislative Information System — filed “at the request of Oregon War Veterans Association” · “Governor signs bill benefiting Guard,” Oregon Sentinel, July–August 2007 · TRICARE news release, 8 August 2007, reprinted by the U.S. Air Force
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