Mobilized: When Orders Flip Your Coverage — and Coming Home

TLDR

Orders over 30 days flip you and your family to active-duty TRICARE — and with delayed-effective-date contingency orders, that coverage can start up to 180 days BEFORE you report.
Hurt or sickened by a duty period without being activated? That's line-of-duty care: one condition, an approved determination, paperwork through your unit — not general insurance.
Coming home from a qualifying mobilization, you get 180 days of the Transitional Assistance Management Program (TAMP) at active-duty-family terms with no premiums — then you rebuild: TRICARE Reserve Select (TRS) does not come back by itself.

Orders over 30 days flip the switch

Orders over 30 days put the member in active-duty TRICARE status for medical and dental care. Your eligible family members are treated as active-duty family members. When you begin qualifying active duty, the family's TRS ends and the spouse and children transition to eligibility based on your active-duty status.

Coverage can start before you report

Delayed-effective-date orders over 30 days under 10 United States Code (USC) 12304b or qualifying contingency authority create active-duty TRICARE eligibility beginning on the later of the order's issuance or 180 days before the duty start date. This early eligibility is implemented through the Defense Enrollment Eligibility Reporting System (DEERS). During that early-eligibility window, you and your family may keep existing civilian insurance and coordinate it with TRICARE.

Your civilian job's plan is a separate system

The Uniformed Services Employment and Reemployment Rights Act (USERRA) is employment law, not TRICARE. It can give a reservist up to 24 months of employer health-plan continuation rights plus reinstatement rights after service. Those rights are separate from TRICARE enrollment and run in parallel with it.

Hurt on duty without being activated: Line of Duty (LOD) care

Line-of-duty (LOD) care covers an injury, illness, or disease incurred or aggravated in a qualified duty status — including qualifying orders of 30 days or less, drill, annual training, and qualifying travel to or from duty — when an LOD determination is approved. LOD authorization is limited to that service-connected condition only. Unrelated and preexisting matters are not covered under an LOD authorization.

The current LOD process uses Worksheet-01 to establish initial emergency/urgent-care eligibility. Worksheet-02 handles civilian follow-on preauthorization where applicable. Within 50 miles or a one-hour drive of a Military Treatment Facility (MTF), the MTF oversees care. The Defense Health Agency (DHA) Great Lakes handles qualifying remote U.S. civilian care, while overseas processing differs. You should not use personal insurance for the LOD condition. Retail-pharmacy prescriptions may require paying up front and filing a reimbursement claim.

Claims trap: if DEERS shows another primary eligibility (like TRS or TAMP), an LOD claim can initially process under that program. The Military Medical Support Office (MMSO) can direct reprocessing without cost-shares or deductibles when the care is actually LOD.

Coming home: the 180-day bridge

After deactivation, a member who served more than 30 consecutive days for a preplanned mission or contingency operation (10 USC 12304b orders qualify) receives 180 days of transitional coverage — no premiums — with eligible family members included. During TAMP, the member and eligible family are treated as active-duty family members. TRICARE Prime Remote is not available during TAMP. The service determines TAMP eligibility and records it in DEERS.

The condition found during TAMP

Transitional Care for Service-Related Conditions (TCSRC): during TAMP, a newly diagnosed service-related condition that can be resolved within 180 days and is validated by a Department of Defense (DoD) physician can receive an additional 180 days of condition-specific care at the active-duty level.

After the bridge: rebuild

TRS is not automatically reinstated after TAMP or deactivation. You must re-enroll or purchase it again. The Continued Health Care Benefit Program (CHCBP) can be purchased after loss of TRICARE eligibility, generally within 60 days.

Activation and deactivation are TRICARE Qualifying Life Events, each opening a 90-day window to make eligible enrollment changes. A 90-day Qualifying Life Event/continuity window applies to applicable plan changes after deactivation. Missing it can let civilian TRICARE coverage lapse, leaving only direct-care (MTF) access until another path opens — a new Qualifying Life Event (QLE), open season, or a plan's own enrollment rule. It does not permanently eliminate eligibility; TRS has continuous enrollment and can be purchased whenever the member qualifies.

The traps

Assuming coverage starts on the report date when early eligibility (up to 180 days before the duty start date) may already be running.
Assuming every activation earns TAMP — only qualifying ones (more than 30 consecutive days for a preplanned mission or contingency operation, or 10 USC 12304b) do.
Treating LOD care as insurance for everything — it is limited to the service-connected condition only.
Letting an LOD claim ride under TRS and eating cost-shares that MMSO could have stripped.
Assuming TRS restarts itself after TAMP — you must re-purchase it.
Missing the 90-day QLE windows at activation and deactivation.
Confusing USERRA employer-plan rights (up to 24 months continuation) with TRICARE eligibility.

Where to go

Your unit administrator — orders, LOD determinations, status.
The DEERS/identification (ID) card office — what your record shows.
MMSO / DHA Great Lakes — LOD claim routing and reprocessing.
The TRICARE contractor — TAMP, TRS re-purchase, CHCBP.
Your civilian employer's human resources (HR) — USERRA continuation and reinstatement.