The US Geological Survey said the quake occurred at 12:13 p.m.

It was centered five miles north northeast of Lake Pillsbury and 22 miles north of Upper Lake, at a depth of 8.8 miles, the survey reported.

By late Thursday, the US Geological Survey received eight shake reports from five zip codes – Willits, San Jose, Milpitas, Berkeley and San Bruno.

A 3.1-magnitude quake occurred four miles north northeast of Lake Pillsbury on May 2, as Lake County News has reported.

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James Abriel, 19, has been missing from Santa Rosa, Calif., since late April 2011. Courtesy photo.

NORTH COAST, Calif. – The family of a Sonoma State University student missing since last month is asking for help in locating him.

James Abriel, 19, a freshman at Sonoma State, was last known to be in Rohnert Park on April 22 and in Santa Rosa on April 24, according to his family.

His parents, Bill and Vangie Abriel, said he is 6 feet 1 inches tall and 180 pounds, with dark blond hair and blue eyes.

He is driving a white four-door 1999 Toyota Camry, with California license plate 4GYG766.

Abriel's family said he is an accomplished musician and a member of several ensembles at Sonoma State, including the string orchestra. He recently performed a musical composition he had written in a recital in the Green Music Center.

The teen earned a 4.0 grade point average in his fall 2010 semester, is an avid hiker and loves the outdoors, according to his family.

“We are so grateful to the Sonoma State administration and students for all their help in trying to locate James,” Bill and Vangie Abriel said. “Please continue to search for him and to let us know if you think of any places we could look. And please keep James and us in your prayers.”

If you see James Abriel or have any information about his whereabouts, please contact the Sonoma State Police Department at 707-664-3403, or the Walnut Creek Police Department at 925-943-5844.

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LAKE COUNTY, Calif. – The latest report on the state's median income showed that in 2009 incomes for Californians dropped for the first time after steady increases over the last decade.

The California Franchise Tax Board's report, released in March, showed that statewide median income for all personal income tax returns decreased to $34,079, 5.1 percent below the $35,923 reported in 2008.

At the same time, median income listed on joint returns decreased to $65,025, 5.7 percent below 2008, the Franchise Tax Board said.

The agency reported that “median income” – which represents the amount reported by a typical California individual or couple – is the point where one-half of the income reported on tax returns is above and one-half is below the midpoint of the range of values.

California taxpayers filed 15.3 million 2009 state income tax returns reporting $1.08 trillion in adjusted gross income, a 2.9 percent decrease from 2008 figures. Adjusted gross income is total income increased or reduced by specific adjustments, before taking the standard or itemized deduction.

In 2009, Lake County residents filed 21,343 returns, with an adjusted gross income of $837,384,000, the state said.

There were 9,492 joint returns filed in Lake County in 2009, for a median joint income of $45,428, a rank of 48 statewide. The state said total tax assessed for the county in 2009 was $22,978,000.

Lake County's median income for 2009 was $28,307, down 4.9 percent from the 2008 number, $29,790. Its median income earned the county a statewide rank of 45 in 2009.

Unlike the state, the county's median income actually began dropping following its peak of $30,071 in 2006. In 2007 it went down 0.7 percent to $29,855, and experienced a smaller decrease, 0.2 percent, to $29,790 in 2008.

In other findings, the Franchise Tax Board said that four Bay Area counties – Contra Costa, Marin, San Mateo and Santa Clara – have led California for 38 years in reported highest median incomes.

Marin County had the highest median income for joint returns at $108,465, a decrease of 8.6 percent from 2008; San Mateo County ranked second with $95,176; Santa Clara County ranked third with $94,209; Contra Costa County ranked fourth with $85,942; and Alameda County ranked fifth with $83,886, according to the report.

Los Angeles County taxpayers filed 25.5 percent of all 2009 income tax returns in California, reporting median incomes of $30,112 for all returns, the state said.

The state said the largest percentage gain in median income for all counties was 7.5 percent, reported in Alpine County.

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Between March 15 and 27, a series of storms swept across Northern California, causing significant damage in 17 counties statewide, including Del Norte, Humboldt and Mendocino counties on the North Coast.

The letter stated that damages are estimated to be more than $44.5 million statewide.

“The March storms brought a lot of devastation to communities across California,” Thompson said. “Heavy rain, snow, wind, and flooding battered local homes and infrastructure, causing significant and costly damage. I urge the President to quickly approve federal disaster assistance for our state to help give local communities the resources they need to get back on their feet.”

In total, 25 California Delegation Members who represent communities affected by the March storms signed on to Congressman Thompson’s letter, including: Wally Herger (R-CA), Lois Capps (D-CA), Sam Farr (D-CA), Laura Richardson (D-CA), Dan Lungren (D-CA), Jeff Denham (R-CA), David Dreier (R-CA), Barbara Lee (D-CA), George Miller (D-CA), Jerry McNerney (D-CA), Dennis Cardoza (D-CA), Jerry Lewis (R-CA), Linda Sánchez (D-CA), John Garamendi (D-CA), Lucille Roybal-Allard (D-CA), Grace Napolitano (D-CA), Lynn Woolsey (D-CA), Mike Honda (D-CA), Brian Bilbray (D-CA), Gary Miller (D-CA), Adam Schiff (D-CA), Zoe Lofgren (D-CA), Anna Eshoo (D-CA), Bob Filner (D-CA), Susan Davis (D-CA), and Pete Stark (D-CA).

“Many of us have had the opportunity to view the damage in our districts first-hand, and it is clear that a major disaster declaration is critical to helping our state recover from these devastating storms,” the letter stated.

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An artist's concept of GP-B measuring the curved spacetime around Earth. Image by James Overduin, Pancho Eekels and Bob Kahn.

Einstein was right again.

There is a space-time vortex around Earth, and its shape precisely matches the predictions of Einstein's theory of gravity.

Researchers confirmed these points at a press conference on Wednesday at NASA headquarters where they announced the long-awaited results of Gravity Probe B (GP-B).

“The space-time around Earth appears to be distorted just as general relativity predicts,” said Stanford University physicist Francis Everitt, principal investigator of the Gravity Probe B mission.

“This is an epic result,” added Clifford Will of Washington University in St. Louis.

An expert in Einstein's theories, Will chairs an independent panel of the National Research Council set up by NASA in 1998 to monitor and review the results of Gravity Probe B.

“One day,” he predicted, “this will be written up in textbooks as one of the classic experiments in the history of physics.”

Time and space, according to Einstein's theories of relativity, are woven together, forming a four-dimensional fabric called “space-time.”

The mass of Earth dimples this fabric, much like a heavy person sitting in the middle of a trampoline.

Gravity, says Einstein, is simply the motion of objects following the curvaceous lines of the dimple.

If Earth were stationary, that would be the end of the story. But Earth is not stationary. Our planet spins, and the spin should twist the dimple, slightly, pulling it around into a four-dimensional swirl. This is what GP-B went to space in 2004 to check.

The idea behind the experiment is simple:

Put a spinning gyroscope into orbit around the Earth, with the spin axis pointed toward some distant star as a fixed reference point. Free from external forces, the gyroscope's axis should continue pointing at the star – forever.

But if space is twisted, the direction of the gyroscope's axis should drift over time. By noting this change in direction relative to the star, the twists of space-time could be measured.

In practice, the experiment is tremendously difficult.

The four gyroscopes in GP-B are the most perfect spheres ever made by humans. These ping pong-sized balls of fused quartz and silicon are 1.5 inches across and never vary from a perfect sphere by more than 40 atomic layers. If the gyroscopes weren't so spherical, their spin axes would wobble even without the effects of relativity.

According to calculations, the twisted space-time around Earth should cause the axes of the gyros to drift merely 0.041 arcseconds over a year.

An arcsecond is 1/3600th of a degree. To measure this angle reasonably well, GP-B needed a fantastic precision of 0.0005 arcseconds. It's like measuring the thickness of a sheet of paper held edge-on 100 miles away.

“GP-B researchers had to invent whole new technologies to make this possible,” noted Will.

They developed a “drag free” satellite that could brush against the outer layers of Earth's atmosphere without disturbing the gyros.

They figured out how to keep Earth's magnetic field from penetrating the spacecraft. And they created a device to measure the spin of a gyro – without touching the gyro.

More information about these technologies may be found in the Science@NASA story, “A Pocket of Near-Perfection,” http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2005/16nov_gpb/ .

Pulling off the experiment was an exceptional challenge. But after a year of data-taking and nearly five years of analysis, the GP-B scientists appear to have done it.

“We measured a geodetic precession of 6.600 plus or minus 0.017 arcseconds and a frame dragging effect of 0.039 plus or minus 0.007 arcseconds,” said Everitt.

For readers who are not experts in relativity: Geodetic precession is the amount of wobble caused by the static mass of the Earth (the dimple in spacetime) and the frame dragging effect is the amount of wobble caused by the spin of the Earth (the twist in spacetime). Both values are in precise accord with Einstein's predictions.

“In the opinion of the committee that I chair, this effort was truly heroic. We were just blown away,” said Will.

One of the super-spherical gyroscopes of Gravity Probe B. Courtesy of NASA.

The results of Gravity Probe B give physicists renewed confidence that the strange predictions of Einstein's theory are indeed correct, and that these predictions may be applied elsewhere. The type of spacetime vortex that exists around Earth is duplicated and magnified elsewhere in the cosmos--around massive neutron stars, black holes, and active galactic nuclei.

“If you tried to spin a gyroscope in the severely twisted space-time around a black hole,” said Will, “it wouldn't just gently precess by a fraction of a degree. It would wobble crazily and possibly even flip over.”

In binary black hole systems – that is, where one black hole orbits another black hole – the black holes themselves are spinning and thus behave like gyroscopes. Imagine a system of orbiting, spinning, wobbling, flipping black holes! That's the sort of thing general relativity predicts and which GP-B tells us can really be true.

The scientific legacy of GP-B isn't limited to general relativity. The project also touched the lives of hundreds of young scientists:

“Because it was based at a university many students were able to work on the project,” said Everitt. “More than 86 PhD theses at Stanford plus 14 more at other Universities were granted to students working on GP-B. Several hundred undergraduates and 55 high-school students also participated, including astronaut Sally Ride and eventual Nobel Laureate Eric Cornell.”

NASA funding for Gravity Probe B began in the fall of 1963. That means Everitt and some colleagues have been planning, promoting, building, operating, and analyzing data from the experiment for more than 47 years – truly, an epic effort.

What's next?

Everitt recalls some advice given to him by his thesis advisor and Nobel Laureate Patrick M.S. Blackett: “If you can't think of what physics to do next, invent some new technology, and it will lead to new physics.”

“Well,” said Everitt, “we invented 13 new technologies for Gravity Probe B. Who knows where they will take us?”

This epic might just be getting started, after all …

Dr. Tony Phillips works for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

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The collision occurred at around 5:30 p.m. on Old Highway 53 in the area of J&L Market, which is located in the 6600 block, according to reports from the scene.

Radio reports indicated that the crash closed both lanes of traffic and involved three adults and a child.

Lake County Fire responded, and Northshore Fire also sent an ambulance to the scene for mutual aid. The reports indicated that three air ambulances were requested, as two of the parties had major injuries and a third had moderate to major injuries.

Two REACH and one CalStar helicopter responded to transport the injured parties to Santa Rosa Memorial Hospital, according to reports from the scene. The Northshore Fire ambulance transported one subject to St. Helena Hospital Clearlake.

Lake County News received reports that one person involved in the crash may have fled the scene.

The names of those involved weren't immediately available. Clearlake Police did not have a report on the crash ready for release Tuesday evening.

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The operation was organized by the Mendocino County Sheriff's Office at the request of the Homeland Security Investigations division of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, according to a report from Capt. Kurt Smallcomb.

Smallcomb said the goal of the sweep was to contact persons who were members or associated with criminal street gangs. The majority of persons identified in the operations plan for the sweep were on active Mendocino County Probation or had active federal apprehension warrants.

The law enforcement agencies that participated in the sweep were the Mendocino County Sheriff's Office, Homeland Security Investigations division, Mendocino County Probation, Willits Police Department and the Fort Bragg Police Department, Smallcomb said.

He said that on Tuesday, May 3, the sweep was conducted in the unincorporated areas of the Ukiah Valley and within the city of Ukiah.

Arrested were Refugio Ortega Vasquez, 36, of Ukiah, on charges of violation of probation and felon in possession of ammunition, as well as an immigration detainer; Pascual Garcia-Felix, 33, of Ukiah, held on an immigration detainer; juvenile male, 16, of Ukiah, on charges of violation of probation, according to Smallcomb.

On Wednesday, May 4, the sweep moved to the unincorporated areas of Anderson Valley, Fort Bragg and within the City of Fort Bragg, Smallcomb said.

He said that the arrestees in that portion of the sweep included Antonio Rafael Martinez, 46, of Fort Bragg on an immigration detainer; Juan Martinez-Losano, 36, of Fort Bragg, held on an immigration detainer as a result of a federal apprehension warrant; Jose Felix Angel-Villa, 21, of Fort Bragg, held on an immigration detainer; Sergio Ricardo Reyes, 19, from Fort Bragg, held on an immigration detainer as a result of a federal apprehension warrant; Alejandro Grijalba, 20, from Fort Bragg, on charges of violation of probation.

During the contacts, an indoor marijuana growing operation was located at a residence in the 33000 block of Mill Creek Drive in Fort Bragg. Smallcomb said an occupant of the residence was unable to provide sufficient documentation to show the marijuana was being grown legally. Statements and evidence collected also showed the marijuana was being grown for financial gain.

As a result, 201 growing marijuana plants and approximately 5 pounds of processed marijuana were seized. Smallcomb said no arrests were made in connection with the incident and reports will be forwarded to the Mendocino County District Attorney's Office for review of possible charges.

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Erica Ray Rouse, 33, of Lucerne, Calif., was arrested on Tuesday, May 3, 2011, for allegedly forging prescriptions for painkillers and antiseizure medication. Lake County Jail photo.

LUCERNE, Calif. – A Lake County Sheriff's Narcotics Task Force investigation into multiple forgeries and fraudulent purchases of prescription medications has led to the arrest of a 33 year old Lucerne woman.

Erica Ray Rouse, 33, was arrested and booked at the Lake County Hill Road Correctional Facility on felony charges of forging or altering a prescription, counterfeiting a prescription blank, forgery and violation of probation, according to Capt. James Bauman.

On Tuesday morning, May 3, narcotics detectives contacted staff at the Kmart pharmacy in Lakeport to investigate a report that multiple medications had been filled by the use of fraudulent prescriptions, Bauman said.

After talking to pharmacy staff and examining their records, detectives determined that as many as 10 prescriptions for the pain medications Ultram and Tramadol, and the antiseizure medication Lorazepam, had been filled for a woman identified as Rouse, according to Bauman.

He said Rouse had allegedly been purchasing the medications from the pharmacy since November of 2010.

When detectives examined the prescriptions used to dispense the medications, they found Rouse had allegedly not only used her own name to obtain the prescriptions, but she is also alleged to have forged several different names on the prescriptions and the prescriptions themselves were counterfeit, Bauman said.

Bauman said narcotics detectives learned that Rouse was on formal felony probation for a prior welfare fraud conviction. At approximately 2:30 p.m. Tuesday, they went to her home in Lucerne to conduct a probation search relating to their investigation.

During their search, detectives located and recovered multiple prescription bottles matching the medications fraudulently purchased at the Kmart pharmacy. Bauman said detectives also located and seized blank counterfeit prescriptions that had apparently been fabricated by use of a computer.

Narcotics detectives continued their investigation on Wednesday morning and contacted pharmacy staff at the CVS drug store in Lakeport, Bauman said. After examining their records, detectives determined Rouse had made at least five additional purchases of the same medications by forging counterfeit prescriptions.

Bauman said the case is pending further investigation and contact with other Lake County pharmacies to determine if Rouse has forged any additional prescriptions.

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From left, Dr. Jim Riggs, Dr. Ron Erickson and Dr. Douglas Houston are the finalists in the search for a new chancellor for the Yuba Community College District, based in Marysville, Calif. Courtesy photos.

CLEARLAKE, Calif. – The Yuba Community College District is getting close to choosing a new chancellor, and it will introduce the three top candidates in a series of upcoming meetings.

In January, Dr. Nicki Harrington, the district's chancellor since 2002, announced she would retire effective June 30, as Lake County News has reported.

Since then, college officials say they've undertaken an extensive nationwide search to find Harrington's successor.

The new chancellor will lead a district that covers 4,200 square miles across eight Northern California counties.

The three finalists for the job include Dr. Ron Erickson, Dr. Douglas Houston and Dr. Jim Riggs.

Erickson, who holds a PhD from the University of Minnesota, is president of Ohio's Hocking College and former vice president of academic affairs and institutional planning at Dakota County Technical College in Minnesota.

Houston is superintendent/president at the Lassen Community College District, based in Susanville, Calif., and formerly vice president for human and information services at the Butte-Glenn Community College District in Oroville, Calif. He received his doctorate in educational leadership from Pepperdine University.

Riggs serves as a professor in community college education and is interim doctoral program director at California State University, Stanislaus in Turlock. He previously was president of Columbia College in Sonora, Calif. He holds a doctorate in higher education leadership and curriculum from the University of Southern California.

The three men will participate in public forums at each of the district's colleges.

The district invites administration, faculty, staff, students and the general public to the events, which will feature a brief introduction of each candidate followed by a question and answer session.

District officials said those who attend the forums will be given comment forums. The completed comment forms will be collected and given to the Yuba Community College District Board of Trustees for review.

The public forums schedule is as follows.

Monday, May 9: Dr. Ron Erickson

• 9 a.m. to 9:50 a.m., Clear Lake Campus forum, Room 800B, 15880 Dam Road Ext., Clearlake.

• 11:15 a.m. to 12:05 p.m., Yuba College forum, Yuba College Theater, 2088 N. Beale Road, Marysville.

• 3 p.m. to 3:50 p.m., Woodland Community College forum, Room 852, 2300 E. Gibson Road, Woodland.

Monday, May 9: Dr. Douglas Houston

• 10 a.m. to 10:50 a.m., Clear Lake Campus forum, Room 800B.

• 11 a.m. to 11:50 p.m., Woodland Community College forum, Room 852.

• 4 p.m. to 4:50 p.m., Yuba College forum, Yuba College Theater.

Tuesday, May 10: Dr. Jim Riggs

• 10 a.m. to 10:50 a.m., Clear Lake Campus forum, Room 800B.

• 1:30 p.m. to 2:20 p.m., Woodland Community College forum, Room 852.

• 4 p.m. to 4:50 p.m., Yuba College forum, Room 201.

For more information on the finalists, visit the chancellor search site at www.yccd.edu/chancellorsearch/index.html.

For further information on the public forums please contact Cathy Richter, executive

secretary to the chancellor, 530-741-6971, This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

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Mark your calendar for Thursday, May 12, and join local watershed groups at the Lower Lake School House Museum, 16435 Morgan Valley Road in Lower Lake.

The doors will open at 6 p.m., with the event beginning immediately following the potluck.

Bring a dish that's ready to be shared with your friends and neighbors, and be prepared to honor the volunteers who work to make your communities and watersheds a better place to live.

Greg Dills, district manager and watershed coordinator for the East Lake and West Lake Resource Conservation Districts will show highlights of activities by the watershed groups in the Upper Cache Creek Watershed.

Dills also will present information about the activities and projects of the county's resource conservation districts.

Friends and neighbors of volunteers from the Big Valley Watershed Council, Chi Council for the Clear Lake Hitch, Lower Lake Watershed Council, Middle Creek CRMP, Nice Watershed Council, and Scotts Creek Watershed Council are especially encouraged to attend.

A Volunteer of the Year Award will be presented to an outstanding member from the active watershed groups. The West Lake Resource Conservation District will also be presenting their annual Partner of the Year Award.

A special treat this year will be a presentation by the tribes regarding the ongoing work they're doing to help preserve the Clear Lake hitch.

The evening is one of celebration for the work the watershed groups do throughout the year, and is being hosted by the Lower Lake Watershed Council. Each year the public is invited to attend the event to learn more about the contributions these ambitious volunteers make to their communities.

There's been a recent focus on illegal dumping activities, and various concerns are being expressed regarding the health of the watersheds in Lake County.

Be a part of what your community can do to help with these issues – join a watershed group.

For more information about these organizations, please visit www.lakecountyrcds.org.

There will be good food, great volunteers and caring members of the community, the perfect combination for a successful annual meeting.

For more information, contact Greg Dills, 707-263-4180, Extension 102.

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The cost is steep, however, with the premium set at $186 a month, or $2,232 a year, for coverage under the fee-for-service TRICARE Standard plan or the preferred provider network offered under TRICARE Extra.

No other standard and extra beneficiaries have to pay a premium. But in approving TRICARE Young Adult (TYA) Congress mandated that premium be set high enough to cover the entire cost. That includes both for medical services and internal administrative costs. So TRICARE officials said they had no other choice than to set premiums at these levels.

Given the premiums, TRICARE officials project only a modest “take rate” the first year of about six percent, or about 14,000 participants out of an eligible population of 233,000 young adult dependents.

For now, TRICARE Standard will be the only TYA option. TRICARE Prime will become another option for TYA enrollees effective Oct. 1, start of the new fiscal year. But to use Prime, young adults will have to live in areas where a TRICARE managed-care network is available.

The monthly premium for TYA Prime will be $213, or $2,556 a year, not counting Prime co-pays. That is more than five times what a military family pays to enroll in TRICARE Prime.

There will be no retroactive coverage back to January 2011 offered under the TYA Prime option when it begins next October.

Families with multiple children between age 21 and 26 won’t get a discount either. Each participant will have to pay the full monthly premium, under either Prime or Standard. Additional features – cost-shares, deductibles and catastrophic cap protection – will be based on the sponsor’s status and the type of coverage selected.

Retired Navy Chief Hospital Corpsman Henry Popell of Vista, Calif., had wanted TYA Prime to cover his 20-year-old son, Colin, when he completes his studies in a few years.

But Popell is reconsidering, given the premium rates, which would total more than $10,000 over four years of coverage eligibility.

“Wow!” said Popell, when we shared with him the rate. “That’s a hell of a jump” from what he now pays for covering Colin as a fulltime student. “It puts me in a pickle.”

In better economic times, Popell said, he would count on his son landing a job with health benefits after graduate school. In this economy, that’s not at all certain.

“The burden’s going to be on me to provide him with health care because I won’t let him go without,” he added. “TRICARE Prime would be the best way to go. But if we’re talking about $2,500 a year, that’s a good hunk of money. There would have to be some very compelling reasons for me to continue that [coverage] after he got out of college.”

Details on the TYA program were published April 27 in the Federal Register as an “interim final rule.”

Though the department solicits comments from beneficiaries and interest groups, the program is starting immediately to accept applications and to extend coverage as applications are approved.

The rule explains that assistant secretary of defense for health affairs, Dr. Jonathan Woodson, “had determined that following the standard practice,” to delay implementation until after a 60-day comment period, “is unnecessary, impractical and contrary to the public interest.”

The final details confirm that Congress failed to deliver to military families what was gained for other families on young adult coverage under the 2009 Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.

As that controversial health reform package moved toward enactment, opponents had warned that it had better not impact prized military health care coverage in any way.

That protectionist posture, however, left military families behind. The health reform law directed other health insurance plans to extend coverage of dependent children out to age 26. TRICARE coverage continued to end at age 21 or age 23 for children attending college full-time.

Last year the armed services committees considered but rejected the idea of adding TYA as another subsidized feature of the TRICARE benefit. That would have added $300 million a year to TRICARE costs, which defense officials complained long have complained are rising dramatically.

So lawmakers opted instead for a full-cost, premium-based TRICARE Young Adult program to take effect Jan. 1, 2011.

Congress imposed two other limitations unique to young adult TRICARE users versus other American young adults: 1) only unmarried dependents are eligible for TYA and 2) young adult dependents are disqualified if they are eligible for medical coverage through an employer-sponsored insurance program.

TRICARE officials needed longer than expected to write implementing regulations. But TYA applicants who pay premiums of $186 back as far as January can qualify for retroactive coverage under TRICARE Standard coverage if young adults can show their medical receipts.

TYA applicants can find more information, including application forms, online at www.tricare.mil/tya.

The rule refers to “various premiums” depending on whether the dependent's sponsor is active duty, retired or eligible under another plan such as TRICARE Reserve Select or TRICARE Reserve Retired.

But Austin Camacho, a spokesman for the TRICARE Management Activity headquartered in Falls Church, Va., said there are no different premiums “at this time.”

The Department of Health and Human Services estimates that 1.2 million young adults have taken advantage of expanded dependent coverage to age 26 under national health reform law.

Spread across all plan participants, the new coverage likely bumped up insurance premiums for family coverage by $60 to $150 a year, according to HHS estimates.

That’s in sharp contrast to what military families will experience.

Proponents on Capitol Hill argue that TYA still will be more affordable than many commercial health insurance plans available for young adults, and that TRICARE will provide more comprehensive coverage too.

To comment, e-mail This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it., write to Military Update, P.O. Box 231111, Centreville, VA, 20120-1111 or visit: www.militaryupdate.com.

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