Quote:
Originally Posted by outlaw
You go on medicare advantage while you are healthy. Then, when you start having some health issues that require expensive procedures, etc., you switch back to medicare with supplemental and expect the supplemental to pick up the difference. Of course, you haven't been paying for that supplemental when you were not needing healthcare as much, so the insurance was making money. Now that you have more healthcare expenses, the insurance company needs to charge you a higher premium to offset your increased costs to them.
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So based on the Brown University study referred to earlier the Advantage Plan insurer insures you as a healthy young senior profiting from the government subsidies to do so, and then employing price, access and coverage limitations, forces you back into original Medicare when you are older and sicker. You are then often times at the mercy of the same insurer as to whether they will sell you a Medicare Supplement at all, based on answers to health questions, or, if they will sell it to you, what price you will pay is dependent upon the state of your health at the time. Does it get any better then this ? A decision to stay with original Medicare and the Supplement Plan purchased when signing up in the first place, seems to have been justified. I am not knocking the insurers for " gaming "
the system. It is what it is and the responsibility for reform is elsewhere.