Federal Government Shutdown

The Military Health System will continue to provide health care to its beneficiaries during a government shutdown. While we can’t predict the exact consequences of a shutdown on every part of our MHS, we may see some impacts on the delivery of health care services within our military hospitals and clinics. Inpatient, acute and emergency outpatient care in our medical and dental facilities will continue, as will private sector care under TRICARE. We anticipate most medical and dental providers, along with most retail pharmacies, will honor TRICARE copays and cost shares. If for some reason a TRICARE network provider or pharmacy requires you to pay up front for care, call your regional contractor to discuss it with the provider. If the contractor can't immediately resolve the issue, you can still choose to get care with that provider and save your receipts to file for reimbursement.

We will update the information on this page as we receive more details. Please sign up for email updates to receive emails about major changes as they occur.

Impacts of government shutdown on MHS beneficiary services

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With the U.S. government closed for business for the 19th time since 1976 and a lot of blame going back and forth, the personal-finance website WalletHub today released its report on the States Most & Least Affected by the 2018 Government Shutdown to add some hard data to all the rhetoric.

WalletHub compared the 50 states and the District of Columbia in terms of six key metrics, ranging from each state’s share of federal jobs and contracts to the percentage of kids covered by CHIP. You can check out some of the main findings below.
 

States Most Affected by the Gov. Shutdown

States Least Affected by the Gov. Shutdown

1

District of Columbia

42

North Dakota

2

Maryland

43

North Carolina

3

Virginia

44

Illinois

4

Alaska

45

Iowa

5

Hawaii

46

Tennessee

6

New Mexico

47

Ohio

7

Montana

48

Delaware

8

Oklahoma

49

Indiana

9

California

50

Michigan

10

Alabama

51

Minnesota

Key Stats

• Red states are less affected by the government shutdown than Blue states, ranking 28.17 and 22.90, respectively, on average. (lower rank = greater impact).
   
• California has the highest percentage of children under CHIP, 22.1 percent. That’s 73.7 times higher than in Minnesota, the state with the lowest, at 0.3 percent.
   
• Georgia has the highest average small business loan size, $459,133. That’s 5.2 times higher than in Hawaii, the state with the lowest average loan size, at $88,608.
   
• Wisconsin has the lowest share of federal jobs, at 1.03 percent. The average state has 2.6 times more federal jobs, at 2.63 percent.

To view the full report, please visit: 
https://wallethub.com/edu/government-shutdown-report/1111/

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3 Ways The Rust Belt Can Re-Invent Itself

New technology and dying industries once made the Rust Belt yesterday’s news, draining some of its Northeast and Midwest states of population and hope.

There are signs that some cities and other pockets of the long-struggling region are rebounding, though. And some credit for renewed optimism goes underground – to the valuable natural resources beneath the Rust Belt’s surface, which relatively new technology helped unearth and unleash as big economic factors.

“Natural gas is a game-changer for this region,” says Greg Kozera, director of marketing for Shale Crescent USA (www.shalecrescentusa.com), a non-profit, non-political group of business and community leaders from Ohio and West Virginia. “Why is the Rust Belt coming back? Cheap natural gas and natural gas liquids, and what makes it all come together is transportation accessibility; the area is close to market. This region is within a day’s drive to over half the U.S. markets. Right here, you can drill the wells and produce the liquids that make the products.

Kozera details three ways the Rust Belt can be impacted economically through the value and potential of its natural resources: 

• Natural gas. The Rust Belt is home to the Marcellus Shale, the largest natural gas field in the United States. It extends from New York to Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Ohio, and includes smaller areas of Maryland, Kentucky, Tennessee and Virginia. Another significant reservoir of natural gas, Utica Shale, stretches through several of the same states. Hydraulic fracturing technology in recent years has made the gas accessible.  “Thanks to American ingenuity and technology, this area in less than 10 years has become a world leader again,” Kozera says. “These fields are massive and the possibilities are huge.” Industry publications project that 35 percent of the nation’s natural gas in 2020 will be produced from the Marcellus/Utica region.
• Manufacturing. There are many ways to monetize an abundance of natural gas and expand a region’s economy, Kozera says. Large natural gas reserves and their liquids – ethane, propane, butane, isobutene and pentane – are building blocks for petrochemicals and make the Rust Belt potentially prime turf for manufacturing plants that make products from petrochemicals. A wide range of products, from household to agriculture, medicine, and food packaging are made from petrochemicals. “It makes more sense to manufacture petrochemicals here than it does in many other places like the Gulf Coast, because the feed stocks are here,” Kozera says.
• Jobs creation. Housing valuable and versatile natural resources and utilizing them in myriad ways leads to high-paying jobs and all the economic offshoots.  The average petrochemical worker makes $94,000 a year. “To run one plant takes 1,500 to 2,000 people,” Kozera says. “In these petrochemical facilities, you start paying people $50,000 to $100,000 a year, and they start buying stuff. They buy cars, big-screen TVs, they build houses, they have kids who need baby furniture and toys, so much of which are made out of plastic, which comes from petrochemicals. They’re going to restaurants. You feed the economy with a lot of people making good money in career jobs, and that changes everything, impacting every aspect of the region’s economy.”

“If you took eastern Ohio, southwest Pennsylvania, northern West Virginia and drew a circle around that whole area and made that a country, we would be the third largest natural gas producer in the world,” Kozera says. “That’s a big game-changer for the region.”

About Greg Kozera

Greg Kozera, director of marketing for Shale Crescent USA (www.shalecrescentusa.com), is a professional engineer and an environmentalist with more than 35 years of experience in the natural gas and oil industry. He also is the author of the books Just the Fracks Ma’am and Learned Leadership. Kozera is a past president of the Virginia Oil & Gas Association (an all-volunteer organization)