How to Enroll in Tricare

Alternative titles:

• Georgians are all paperwork nazis.
  
• Oh DEERS.
• *insert gnashing and whining along with bad puns*
  

So, I've been stuck in the terrible wastelands of in-between-insurance-providers. My school insurance, while technically still active until January 31, is essentially worthless outside of Minnesota, and Tricare (shiny new military insurance) is apparently quite a hassle to get enrolled in.

Rough Guide to Getting on Tricare
1. Get enrolled in DEERS (a very charming acronym for a horrifically long name which seems to just mean 'military family members'). This involves first making an appointment by either calling their phone number, which has thus far always resulted in a busy signal, or going to Darling Hall (appropriate name for enrolling new spouses, no? big scary building, though - I'd take a picture to show you if it were legal) and waiting in line for several years to speak with somebody.

2. Go to Darling Hall (Noah braved the lengthy in-person wait to make an appointment) with every document you can summon and attempt to convince them that you're a real person who is actually married to someone in the military.

3. Be rejected because your official birth certificate (the certified one that you've had essentially since birth) is old-school and doesn't have a parent's name on it. This means that you are clearly not who you say you are (or who all of my dozen pieces of other identification say you are) and should not be offered any government services.

4. Spend several hours on the internets trying to figure out how to get a new-style birth certificate.

5. Apply for new-style birth certificate.

6. Become aware that since your name has recently changed, you are clearly not who you say you are and must provide additional documentation.

7. Make your way through Georgia's version of a blizzard (laughably little snow, but ice on all the roads) to the FedEx office to fax them more forms.

8. Discover that they didn't like how you faxed them and return the next day to do it again.

9. Form-faxing success achieved! Wait five days for it to arrive in the mail. Sacrifice goat to increase odds of birth certificate arriving in time to get signed up for Tricare starting February 1. If it arrives after the 19th, insurance probably won't get started until March 1, since clearly it is impossible to enroll someone in the middle of a month.

And that's as far as we've gotten. We're waiting for the form to come so we can sign up for DEERS so I can get enrolled in Tricare. And if that doesn't work out... Well, I don't know. I've been feeling Buckethead (er, James - yeah, him) move a lot, so I'm not really concerned that there's any danger, but it's kind of scary being in the land of the uninsured.

I think I'm just going to assume it'll all work out until I discover it won't and then go from there.