The National Guard has joined the novel coronavirus response effort to the tune of 24,800 members working in their local communities. They're on the front lines—testing staff and residents in nursing homes as well as helping to clean them. They're buttressing testing and screen sites, building field hospitals, and screening air travel passengers at airports. They're at risk of contracting the virus every day, and fewer than half of them have health care coverage through the military because they're not serving under an order from the federal government
For the 11,000 who have been deployed for the next 31 days under an executive order from Donald Trump signed this week, it's not a problem. They've got coverage under the TRICARE military health insurance program. It's available to Guard members who are under federal orders for more than 30 days. That's a big deal. They can use TRICARE health care coverage for prescriptions wherever they are, outside of military treatment facilities. But more half of all the Guard members deployed don’t have that coverage because it doesn't extend to deployments ordered by governors.
They could go to military hospitals if they get sick and have one close enough. If not, they have to pay out of their own pocket or with private insurance. Tuesday's order from Trump expanded the federal coverage to Arizona, Colorado, Kentucky, Mississippi, Montana, Nevada, North Carolina, Oregon, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Virginia, Wisconsin, and West Virginia. Guard members there will have TRICARE coverage for now on top of 21 other states, three territories, and Washington, D.C., which already had it. That's likely to increase the number of Guard members serving around the nation.
Air Force Gen. Joseph Lengyel, chief of the National Guard Bureau, told reporters on Wednesday that the process for getting these troops federal status and military health coverage has been slow. Surprise, surprise—Trump hasn't been on top of yet another aspect of this crisis. There's another thing to add in to the next big stimulus bill from Congress: authorization for every National Guard member responding to the crisis to have TRICARE coverage, at least for the duration of the crisis.