Get Medicare! No to Medicare Advantage. It's perfume-covered doo-doo that'll bankrupt or kill you.

https://www.democraticunderground.com/100216622964

Katie Porter leads letter urging Biden not to dump more money into Medicare Advantage

After reading up on it, MA is more of a HMO and it was less risky to pay the Part B for better coverage.

I cannot stand Joe Namath and the Dyn-O-Myte guy shilling for MA.

If you like your doctor and don't want to be denied, go Traditional and don't look back.

My husband and I have original Medicare and a supplement (TransAmerica). We have had this since we have been on Medicare, 9 years for me, 11 years for him. We can go to ANY DOCTOR OR HOSPITAL THAT TAKES MEDICARE! Most do. We are not locked into any "networks". Our supplement has increased perhaps by $10 a month since we originally got it. It pays for everything that Medicare does not pay for except the part B deductible. We also have part D with Wellcare. The co pays are $0 for tiers 1 and 2 which are generic drugs. I have not needed to take much else, and that premium is under $9 per month. What insurance people do not tell you is that if you want to get off of MA and go back to original Medicare, you can, HOWEVER, you must go through underwriting to get on a medicare supplement plan. Companies that offer those plans can reject people or make them pay higher costs. This forces many sick people to stay on their Medicare Advantage plan. My mom (95 years old) has original medicare and her federal health insurance as a supplement. That pays for all the 20 % portion that Medicare does not pay as well as for her medications. We keep getting calls to switch to Advantage plans also. I wish they would quit calling us.

my TOTAL monthly output for premium is $9. To go with a supplement plan it would be roughly $250/month premium PLUS the $135 or more off the top of my SS check. For now MA is working for me. I asked my ins guy why would I get regular medicare supp and he said if I was quite sick with ongoing med problems. Bring it on .

... while leaving Medicare to cover the patients in the pool who need more extensive and expensive medical care.

warned me last year NOT to get MA because they would never pay for my Humira (biologic drug). Medicare part D won’t do much better so I didn’t get it. I still have my husband’s federal B&S insurance, so it will help pay along with the company that makes Humira. They also pay a good portion of my other medications I take for my RA as well as other medications-I still pay a co-pay of course.
My FIL had a HMO and they pretty much killed him as far as I am concerned. He was older-70’s-when he got cancer. They pretty much limited what they would pay for and he had to leave the doctor he had gone to for years when he went on the HMO. In the beginning he didn’t have to pay for prescriptions (not that he took many) when he first started, but he had to go to their pharmacy I think. Then after a couple of years he had to start paying a co-pay for his prescriptions even though they promised in the beginning he would never have to pay anything for scripts.

and I went to a Medicare workshop which seemed to explain why we needed Caremore as just medicare only covered 80% of costs.

I listened to the MA pitch once after watching the commercials saying I could get $100 more a month in SS but after listening it turned out I'd get docked even more from my SS benefits than what Caremore costs.

I still get the MA people calling three of four times a day shilling it but I just tell them I'm happy with what I have and then hang up.

But I'm still not entirely clear but I think Caremore/Anthem is a medicap plan. Am I right about that?

Valuable public service.

so I'm sticking with plain Medicare. My reason? I don't want to put up with insurance company horseshit about which group, in group, out group, which hospital, and on and on it goes. Then there are the restrictions on drugs they don't like paying for.

Fuck them with a rusty chainsaw, sideways. It's worth the extra money when I need care to avoid the hassles.

However, I realize some people aren't quite as flush, and one of those hideous plans might be necessary.

(FWJW, my snapped hip cost about $2500, all told. It was worth it to be able to go to the county hospital, they're better at traumatic injury and I got great care instead of good care, hospital through rehab. A year without disaster is about $120 out of pocket)

Don't travel if you have an advantage plan. You won'r be able to get care