Another thing to consider: Do you live here full time, or do you go back to a home state in the summer? Advantage plans are only good for the area of your permanent residence. For instance, we maintain a home residence in MI, and would pay mucho deductibles if we used an advantage plan and had to go to a doctor here in FL, because we would be out of the Advantage plan's network area. So we have a supplemental plan instead. It could work out to be the same either way, but we like being able to use any doctor anywhere who takes Medicare and not be nickle and dimed to death with deductibles.( BCBS Advantage plan in MI was the worst on this--there was a deductible for eating breakfast in the morning.) All our excellent doctors are at University of Michigan, so it is important to us to be able to still use them without deductibles.
And there's no such thing as a free Advantage plan in MI.
You must use an Advantage plan in your permanent residence area, whereas a supplemental is good anywhere. And we travel a lot. Our drug plan is $24/mo through Coventry (online). It's exactly the same coverage as our insurance broker was going to sell us for $80/mo. Do a lot of research!
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