[lawgolfer]

This post gives another reason to not enroll in an Advantage plan.

It's easy to be taken in by the TV ads put out by Advantage plans. Everyone wants "free things". You will get a gym membership, a small allowance for dental care and, sometimes, money back.

However, when "the rubber meets the road", Advantage plans are lacking. You will be limited to the doctors and medical groups in the Advantage plan. That seems O.K. until you want to be treated by a particular specialist. The plan will have to provide you with a doctor in the particular speciality you need. However, you have little control over which specialist. If you go to a doctor outside the plan, you will have a fight with the Advantage plan and will have a large co-pay which quickly eats up any savings you made by enrolling in the plan.

In contrast, regular Medicare allows you to be treated by any doctor in a needed specialty who will accept Medicare as payment in full. In The Villages, this means nearly every doctor. It also means that if you want to return to the specialist in your home town who treated you before you moved to TV, you can do so, provided you pay your travel expenses. In effect, you can go to most every doctor anywhere in the country except for the Mayo Clinic which will not accept Medicare. Regular Medicare is one of the best insurance plans available, and, is a relative bargain compared to the benefits it provides.

Before enrolling in an Advantage plan, think long and hard about being starting over with a new specialist, an oncologist or cardiologist, with whom you are not familiar, or returning to the one who has successfully treated you for years.