[rustyp]

Originally Posted by villagetinker

Medicare and supplemental you get to decide what doctor to see, etc., Medicare ADVANTAGE is MANAGED CARE you do not get to decide on which doctor to use, your PCP makes this decision for you as well as your insurance company. This seems to work very well if you are healthy, not so good if you have medical problems. We tried it and were able to get back to original Medicare and are much happier. SHINE (Senior Health Information Network) has a lot of unbiased information on this subject and has local meetings for one on one discussions.

The above comments regarding specialists is from 8 years ago and may not be valid under the current insurance coverages. We had very long waits (3 to 4 months) for specialists, and the ones we had been using would NOT accept the advantage plan. We had no option but to drop Advantage and go back to Medicare and supplemental. NOTE: there is a limitation (50 weeks I think), that if you go over that you may be subjected to underwriting to get back to regular Medicare and supplemental.

Yes I did notice paragraph 2 was added 4 hours after paragraph 1