The Medicare Advantage program may be beneficial to to a small percentage of geezers but, unless medical insurance corporations have suddenly and unexpectedly morphed from vultures into philanthropists, the real advantages are for them. Having been on Medicare since 2004, I’ve had the opportunity to become familiar with an important but flawed system.
This post includes a short assessment of the scam aspects of Medicare Advantage and a video of the information necessary to make an informed decision. My apologies for posting this so late — only days before the sign-up deadline of December 7 (Pearl Harbor Day). I’ve been distracted lately by a couple of more surgeries. The video is about 33 minutes long but it should be required watching for those affected.
Without further delay, the scam.
The inundation of media, phone calls and mailings with constant, less than honest appeals to sign up for these programs reeks of desperation. I just suffered through watching Broadway Joe Namath beg me to sign up before the deadline. Thankfully, it only happened 3 times within an hour. That was even without having to change channels.
The cost the appeals by Joe and the other 17,246 celebrities is astronomical. The insurance corporations obviously expect their investment in this PR blizzard to pay off handsomely. It will.
They expect you to believe they will give you a Cadillac program for the price of a used Yugo. How can they do that? First, they restrict you to a list of doctors and hospitals that are willing to accept less than regular Medicare pays. It’s unlikely you have ever heard either doctors or hospitals complaining about Medicare paying too much. Also, watch out for those deductibles, co-pays and other limitations they “forgot” to mention in the ads.
The conservatives have been trying from the get-go to kill off such frills as Social Security, Medicare, Unemployment Insurance, Unions and such. They have been quite innovative in pursuit of these goals. They want to privatize and starve Social Security and Medicare.
The insurance corporations get the money from your Social Security that now goes to pay your Medicare premiums. Medicare gets nothing and you no longer get Medicare. You don’t even get a Medicare card. Also, Medicare gives the insurance corporations a further subsidy. This reduces the funds available to everyone else for regular Medicare. It guarantees them a profit while starving Medicare and limiting it from possibly offering more benefits or reducing the cost to regular enrollees.
Importantly, no longer being covered by Medicare, medical decisions are no longer made by your doctor. They are in the tender care of the corporation. While Medicare will pay for all covered medical care your doctor considers beneficial, the corporations have admitted that they quite frequently deny care, simply to save them money.
My personal situation is not all that common. I have 21 doctors and more maladies than those listed in Grey’s Anatomy — the manual or the television program. I have regular Medicare plus Medigap and Part D. I have queried a couple of representatives that have called. My record of use means that NO insurance corporation will cover me with their advantage plan, Also, though I have been a customer of Blue Cross/Blue Shield for decades, were I to cancel my Medigap coverage, they and all other corporations would refuse to cover me.
Although the following video is, as I mentioned earlier, a bit on the long side but, if you or a loved one is eligible for Medicare, this video is very important. The presenter claims to receive no compensation for making it. I can affirm that I receive no benefit, beyond serving a segment of my readership.
If you found this educational, edifying, interesting or otherwise worth your time, this geezer would appreciate a little supplement to those Social Security checks, They forgot to factor in the cost of publishing a blog.
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Many thanks,
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