“6 Things Your Medicare Advantage Salesperson Doesn’t Want You to Know or Think About”
1. Once you enroll in a Medicare Advantage HMO or Fee for Service plan you no longer have health coverage through Medicare.
· Medicare will pay the Insurance Company a pre-negotiated monthly payment for as long as you are enrolled.
· In most cases you will also have to pay a small premium to the insurance company .
2. Medicare Advantage Salespeople normally market these plans to you by comparing their smaller premium to the often higher premium of a Medicare Supplement Plan F. Yet this is not an apples to apples comparison.
· Though the premium is less, so is the coverage.
· For Example, Medicare Supplement Insurance Plan F along with Medicare Part A & B can provide 100% coverage for all Medicare approved doctor and hospital expenses.
· Medicare Advantage Plans have co-payments and deductibles in addition to their monthly premium
· Medicare Advantage Coverage Gaps can include:
i. Simple doctor’s visits
ii. Skilled nursing care
iii. Hospital Visits
iv. Emergency Room Care
3. Many Seniors enroll in Medicare Advantage plans in order to receive the prescription drug coverage unnecessarily.
· Prescription drug coverage is available to them without restricting their access to healthcare options through Medicare Part D.
4. Often people sign up for a plan because it is “Medicare Approved” without knowing they are signing up for an HMO, PPO or restrictive Fee for Service Plan.
· This takes away the patient’s right to choose their own doctor, hospital or specialist.
· They are restricted to the doctors and hospitals that are in the insurance company’s network.
· In the case of Fee for Service Plans, there is no network to choose from but many doctors may not accept the plan because of long delays in payments and complicated claims procedures.
· When choosing an HMO, the patients are often forced to first make an appointment with their “primary care physician” to get a referral before seeing a specialist.
· HMOs also force a patient’s doctor to work within complicated administrative processes just to get their patient the care that they need.
· Even then the physician has limited choices.
5. How Medicare Advantage Plans can Kill You!
Imagine for a moment that a dreaded day comes that you are diagnosed with cancer.
· You of course would want to go to a cancer treatment center that boasts a lot higher success rate than local hospitals.
· That center may not be in the insurance company’s network.
· Therefore you would be forced to accept treatment at a local hospital that does not specialize in such treatment.
· Statistically, you will run a lot higher risk of dying from your cancer than if you had kept Medicare coverage that would allow you to get the best care possible.
· With Medicare you would have been able to go to the treatment center of their choice and your chances of survival would have increased.
· What’s worse, since you are on a Medicare Advantage Plan you have now opted out of Medicare so you can’t even fall back on Medicare Coverage if they wish to choose their own treatment facility. You will have to pay 100% of the costs as if you had no insurance whatsoever.
6. Why have you been paying into Medicare all these years?
· The bottom line is that the choice of health insurance that you make determines the type of treatment you will receive when the time comes that you need treatment.
· Often, making the wrong choices now could mean the difference between life and death later.
· When you look back on all the tax dollars that you paid over your lifetime so that you would have good health insurance during your Golden Years, why would you throw your choices away just to try to save a few dollars?
· Would you do this when the odds of you needing quality healthcare are the highest they’ve ever been?