06-26-2024, 09:44 AM
Interesting video. We have Medicare Advantage. The things he mentioned at the very end matter, a lot. His mom basically saved $775 on her $700k cancer battle on the total cost. But, as he mentioned, there are Medicare Advantage programs that include vision, hearing and dental. In ours, we get an annual vision test (value of $100), we get a pair of glasses every 2 years (value of $250) and our dental pays basically half of what our out-of-network dentist charges (value of $500), I can get new hearing aids every year (value of $700 if I use the United Healthcare captive company), we get an unlimited visits to a bunch of health clubs (we use Planet Fitness-value of $120), they give us $120 a year in OTC stuff by debit card, they give us $120 a year by debit card for anything but alcohol or tobacco stuff if we walk 5000 steps 10 days a month, and they give us another $35 if we answer a few health questions and get a flu shot. They cover a lot of drugs; I've been on 5 prescriptions this year (off all now!) and they completely paid for 3 of them and I paid $12 for the other one. The last one I was going to have to pay $115 for but I found one of those drug savings cards that let me pay $11 for it. That was strange, but I'll take it!
One thing he mentioned about Medicare Advantage was the you have to stay in network. That is true with a lot of Medicare Advantage programs in our area. But we chose one that allows us to see anybody who takes Medicare anywhere in the country. None of our doctors are in their network nor is the local hospital and we just go and they take care of the billing. We do get co-pay amounts that are always modest and mostly not able to be easily interpreted! I would not have done Medicare Advantage if we had to stay in network to get any benefit at all--very few of our local doctors are in the United Healthcare Medicare Advantage network.
I had prostate ablation surgery in March with an overnight stay in the hospital. The billing has just been completed. The hospital charged $78k. That was dramatically reduced to $8k by United Healthcare. I'm being billed $507. The several thousand the surgeon, anesthesiologist and lab each charged was reduced and I owe nothing. My Medicare Advantage program has me pay $350 a night for hospital stays. So, the $507 that I owe involved the $350 for the hospital stay and the other $157 is everything else that the hospital billed for the surgery and overnight stay.
I had read, prior to choosing what to do about Medicare, that people who are basically healthy do very well with Medicare Advantage. We usually see maybe 1 doctor a year beyond our annual physicals so we chose Medicare Advantage. Even as we're getting older it seems to be the best option for us. There are reports that the administration is cutting back on Medicare Advantage payments for the upcoming year so I expect our program to change. We'll see how it works out in the future.
In any case, it was a good video that will be helpful for a lot of people choosing. We have good friends who need a lot of medical care. They pretty much all chose Medicare with a supplement plan and are happy with it.
Edit: cleaned it up a bit.
One thing he mentioned about Medicare Advantage was the you have to stay in network. That is true with a lot of Medicare Advantage programs in our area. But we chose one that allows us to see anybody who takes Medicare anywhere in the country. None of our doctors are in their network nor is the local hospital and we just go and they take care of the billing. We do get co-pay amounts that are always modest and mostly not able to be easily interpreted! I would not have done Medicare Advantage if we had to stay in network to get any benefit at all--very few of our local doctors are in the United Healthcare Medicare Advantage network.
I had prostate ablation surgery in March with an overnight stay in the hospital. The billing has just been completed. The hospital charged $78k. That was dramatically reduced to $8k by United Healthcare. I'm being billed $507. The several thousand the surgeon, anesthesiologist and lab each charged was reduced and I owe nothing. My Medicare Advantage program has me pay $350 a night for hospital stays. So, the $507 that I owe involved the $350 for the hospital stay and the other $157 is everything else that the hospital billed for the surgery and overnight stay.
I had read, prior to choosing what to do about Medicare, that people who are basically healthy do very well with Medicare Advantage. We usually see maybe 1 doctor a year beyond our annual physicals so we chose Medicare Advantage. Even as we're getting older it seems to be the best option for us. There are reports that the administration is cutting back on Medicare Advantage payments for the upcoming year so I expect our program to change. We'll see how it works out in the future.
In any case, it was a good video that will be helpful for a lot of people choosing. We have good friends who need a lot of medical care. They pretty much all chose Medicare with a supplement plan and are happy with it.
Edit: cleaned it up a bit.