Posted on 08/05/2013 4:18:10 PM PDT by ken in texas
Apologies in advance for the vanity.
Any advice for someone signing up for Medicare?
We're mainly trying to start out with some reasonable choices and make sure we avoid some of the future penalties we've heard of.
Any advice or suggestions appreciated.
Medicare is only good for hospitalization and you still have to pay 20%
of the cost!
Get the supplemental insurance right up front. Humana is great. Also, depending on income, perhaps she could qualify for drug assistance.
Try not to be ill?
Just make sure that your Dr even accepts Medicare patients. I did research on various plans only to find out there were no Drs that accepted them. Ironically the local hospital didn’t even accept Medicare patients. Took me quite awhile but finally found a GP that accepted Medicare and a Mutual of Omaha supplemental plan. Humana has a drug plan for $18 a month but you have to use a Walmart pharmacy. So I pay $100 a month for Medicare, $150 for the supplemental plan and $18 for the drug plan.....and I never use any of it knock on wood.
A lot of places will only take the original medicare.
For this type of info requesting post,your response is not necessary and detracts from a quality post
Medicare pays for a lot more than hospitalization. Pays for doctor visits, durable medical equipment. And, a whole more.
The most important thing we learned is to obtain a Part D drug plan from the start, because if you don't you'll pay a "Penalty" later on if you do enroll in a plan - and that 'penalty' is forever, by way of monthly premium, and grows annually.
Since we're virtually drug-free, we went with a Walmart-Humana plan that doesn't cover much, but it costs each of us less than 13 bucks a month.......in the event we require pricey meds, we'll simply swap plans during the open enrollment (switch) period that comes each October.
You can apply 3 months prior to your 65th birthday, and I applied online as soon as I was eligible.
In my case I had to wait about 85 of those days to (finally!) get my card and ID number, but my coverage actually began on the first of the month in which my birthday fell, which was about 25 days prior to when I got my card and ID.
I have a supplemental through Anthem BC/BS.
We all try not to be sick.Thats a given.
I did not realize there were any. That is in Texas? So they simply refuse admission?
I checked in WA, OR, and ID and there were 91, 60 and 38 hospitals that DO accept Medicare. 381 that do in Texas -- that really is a big state.
Don't.
We have the AARP (yes, I know) supplemental insurance. It’s been great. It’s cheap and it covers more than you think. It’s even got dental in it and some hearing insurance.
I just had my knee replaced. The bill was $50,000 with $15,000 in patient rehab. I had to pay $1060 on the first bill, and $700 for the rehab. I had outpatient rehab too, and I haven’t seen a bill for that yet.
My husband had a brain tumor removed. The bill was more than $100,000 and we paid less than $3000 for it.
I have no complaints about Medicare and AARP insurance.
So far she's OK on that - the Dr accepts Medicare for existing patients.
It is a new Texas Health Hospital at Alliance. I looked on their web site back in December to find out what insurances they accepted and none of them were for Medicare. Finally after several unproductive phone conversations with the hospital billing office I was directed to someone that said they had their application for Medicare in but the government hadn’t accepted it. The hospital opened in Sept ‘12 and as of March ‘13 they were only accepting Medicare for ER services. They finally got Medicare approval around May.
I actually know plenty of people that enjoy poor health.
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A doctor gave me this advice: Get the most expensive supplementary plan. The bad news is: You’ll need it. The good news is: You’ll have it.
The only money I ever pay out is the Part D copays.
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