Straight Medicare has been around for over fifty years. They have the bugs pretty well worked out. They could always do better, but I have been happy with them for 11 years.
Okay, wait a minute.
This stuff has been going on for decades. The key item of information to understand is that only recently did commissions for medicare insurance agents become essentially the same for Medigap (which is “Original Medicare” or “Traditional Medicare” or “Medicare Supplement” all synonomous) as for Medicare Advantage.
In decades past commissions were much higher for Medigap. This lead an enormous number of horror stories to get propagated for Medicare Advantage.
A poster above said contacted Mayo and was told his Medicare Advantage was no good there. Well, of course it isn’t if it is outside the geographical area. It is VERY likely Mayo participates with a local Advantage plan or 2 or 3 or whatever.
Look, when you approach age 65 you will be buried in brochures to make this choice (Advantage vs Medigap). It is enormously complicated. No one who isn’t approaching 65 or is 65+ will have done the necessary study and thus will not know anything. No one will want to dig through it until they have to.
Last point, there have been zillions of studies to determine if Medicare Advantage care is inferior to Medigap. The studies point in both directions, and never by large amounts.