Most premium-based health coverage in America costs somewhere between a car payment and a mortgage payment. TRICARE Reserve Select costs about as much as a phone plan.
That is the whole story of this page. A drilling Guard or Reserve member who is not on long-term active duty orders and not eligible for federal employee health benefits can buy comprehensive family coverage for $286.66 a month in 2026. The comparison against a marketplace plan is not close, and the main reason eligible people miss out is that they never checked whether they qualified. Every figure below is a 2026 TRICARE premium rate, verified September 6, 2026 against TRICARE’s cost tables and the Army’s own benefit fact sheet.
What TRICARE Reserve Select Is
TRS is a premium-based plan available worldwide to qualified members of the Selected Reserve and their families. It behaves almost exactly like TRICARE Select: you can see any TRICARE-authorized provider, you pay less at network providers, and no referrals are required for any type of care, though some services need prior authorization.
The benefit includes TRICARE’s pharmacy program. You can use military hospitals and clinics on a space-available basis, but TRS enrollees cannot be assigned a primary care manager at a military treatment facility. Any TRICARE-authorized provider can serve as your primary care provider instead.
The sponsor has to purchase the coverage for family members to be covered. There is no way for a spouse to buy in independently.
What TRICARE Reserve Select Costs in 2026
There are exactly two rates. Member-only covers the service member alone. Member-and-family covers the member plus every eligible family member, at the same price whether that is one dependent or six.
| Coverage type | Monthly premium (2026) | Annual premium | Annual deductible | Catastrophic cap |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Member only | $57.88 | $694.56 | $66 (E-1 to E-4) or $198 (E-5 and above) | $1,324 per family |
| Member and family | $286.66 | $3,439.92 | $132 (E-1 to E-4) or $397 (E-5 and above) | $1,324 per family |
Both premiums appear identically on TRICARE’s own 2026 health plan cost table and on the Army’s TRICARE Reserve Select fact sheet listing rates effective January 1, 2026. TRICARE adjusts these figures annually, effective every January 1.
The catastrophic cap is where the real value shows up. TRS carries the active duty family member Group B cap of $1,324 per family for 2026, which is the lowest cap tier in the TRICARE system outside of active duty Group A.
Premiums do not count toward it. TRICARE states directly that monthly premiums for TRS, TRICARE Retired Reserve, TRICARE Young Adult, and the Continued Health Care Benefit Program are excluded from the catastrophic cap. Once you hit the cap, covered services stop costing you anything for the rest of the calendar year, but the premium keeps coming out.
So the realistic worst-case year for a TRS family is $3,439.92 in premiums plus $1,324 in cost-sharing, or about $4,764. For a single member it is roughly $2,019.
What You Pay When You Actually Use It
TRS cost-shares follow the active duty family member Group B schedule, which is the friendliest civilian-side schedule TRICARE publishes.
Network copays for 2026 are $19 for a primary care visit, $33 for specialty care, $26 at an urgent care center, $52 for an emergency room visit, $33 for ambulatory surgery, and $79 per inpatient admission. Preventive care, laboratory work, and X-rays are $0 at network providers. Durable medical equipment is 10% at network providers.
Non-network care is 20% of the TRICARE maximum allowable charge after you meet the deductible. Watch the balance-billing gap here: non-participating providers can charge up to 15% above the TRICARE allowable amount, and you owe that difference on top of your cost-share. It does not count toward the catastrophic cap either. If you get hit with one of those bills, our guide on negotiating medical bills covers what to do next.
The deductible resets each calendar year and is tiered by the sponsor’s pay grade, not by income. Prescription costs count toward it. For how deductibles, copays, and caps stack in general, see our health insurance deductible explainer.
Who Qualifies, and the FEHB Rule That Trips People Up
You must be a member of the Selected Reserve of the Ready Reserve. That includes the Army National Guard, Army Reserve, Navy Reserve, Marine Corps Reserve, Air National Guard, Air Force Reserve, Coast Guard Reserve, and Space Force Guardians.
Three things disqualify you:
- You are on active duty orders for more than 30 days.
- You are covered under the Transitional Assistance Management Program.
- You are eligible for, or enrolled in, the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program.
That third one is the big one, and it catches a lot of dual-status technicians and federal civilian employees who drill on the weekend. Eligibility for FEHB is disqualifying on its own. You do not have to enroll in FEHB for it to block TRS. TRICARE’s enrollment page notes that this exclusion ends January 1, 2030, which would open TRS to a large group of Guard and Reserve members currently shut out.
Individual Ready Reserve members do not qualify, including Navy Reserve Voluntary Training Units. Survivor coverage is not affected by FEHB eligibility. And if you personally do not qualify but your spouse is a Selected Reserve member who does, you can be covered through their enrollment.
One more provision worth knowing: under Section 702 of the FY 2024 National Defense Authorization Act, for Selected Reserve members enrolled in TRS on or after October 1, 2025, eligible surviving family members may purchase new or continue existing TRS coverage for up to three years after the member’s death. Surviving young adult dependents may also buy TRICARE Young Adult coverage under that provision, at survivor cost-shares.
How to Purchase TRS
There is no open season. If you qualify, you can buy TRS at any point in the year.
Four routes work. Online, log in to milConnect, select Benefits, then Beneficiary Web Enrollment. By phone, call your regional contractor: Humana Military in the East at 800-444-5445, TriWest in the West at 888-874-9378. By mail or fax, send a completed Reserve Component Health Coverage Request Form (DD Form 2896-1) to your regional contractor with the initial premium payment. Overseas, you can also submit in person at a TRICARE Service Center.
TRICARE flags one specific trap on the online form: do not select FEHB if you are not a federal employee, because doing so will make the system treat you as ineligible and you will not be able to complete the enrollment.
Ending coverage has consequences. You can disenroll at any time, but you cannot re-enroll for 12 months. Simply stopping payment terminates your coverage and you still owe the premiums that were due, so use the actual disenrollment process.
TRICARE Retired Reserve: The Same Idea at 11 Times the Price
TRR is the adjacent product for qualified retired Reserve members under 60, and the pricing gap is dramatic. For 2026, TRR costs $645.90 per month for member-only and $1,548.30 per month for member-and-family.
That is more than 11 times the TRS member-only premium and about 5.4 times the TRS family premium. The cost-sharing is different too: TRR follows the retiree schedule ($33 primary care, $52 specialty, $105 emergency room, $231 per inpatient admission at network providers) with a $4,635 catastrophic cap instead of $1,324.
The practical point is that TRS is a benefit worth protecting while you have it. Once a Reserve career ends and TRR is the option on the table, the cost profile looks like ordinary unsubsidized private insurance.
TRS vs. a Marketplace Plan
Here is the like-for-like comparison, using 2026 national figures.
| Option | 2026 monthly cost | Who it covers |
|---|---|---|
| TRS, member only | $57.88 | One person |
| TRS, member and family | $286.66 | Member plus all eligible family |
| Marketplace benchmark silver, before subsidies | $625 (national average) | One 40-year-old |
| HealthCare.gov lowest cost plan, after tax credits | $50 (projected average) | One eligible enrollee |
| TRICARE Retired Reserve, member and family | $1,548.30 | Member plus family |
KFF’s 2026 average benchmark premium, the second-lowest-cost silver plan priced for a 40-year-old, is $625 a month nationally, up from $497 in 2025. State averages range from $401 in New Hampshire to $1,299 in Vermont. TRS covers an entire family for less than half the national benchmark price of covering one adult.
The one scenario where the Marketplace wins on premium is deep subsidy eligibility. CMS projected the average HealthCare.gov premium after tax credits at $50 a month for the lowest cost plan in 2026. A Guard family with modest income could beat $286.66 that way, though usually on a bronze plan with a much higher deductible than TRS’s $132 to $397. Check where your household lands against the ACA subsidy income limits before assuming either way.
For members between drill status and civilian work, TRS also compares favorably to the usual gap-coverage options. It is cheaper and far more comprehensive than short-term health insurance, and it beats the pricing most people find in our guides to self-employed health insurance and coverage while unemployed.
The Bottom Line
If you drill in the Selected Reserve, are not on long orders, and have no FEHB eligibility, TRS is almost certainly the cheapest comprehensive coverage available to your household at $57.88 or $286.66 a month for 2026. The FEHB rule is the single biggest reason eligible-looking people get turned away, and it is worth confirming your status before you plan around it.
Rates change every January 1 and are not yet published for 2027 as of September 2026. For the rest of the military health cost picture, including Prime and Select enrollment fees and retiree tiers, see our full TRICARE cost guide.