I’ve been working on enrolling in Medicare for the first time. What I wanted to highlight for people is that there are various “agents” that present themselves and being helpful “advisors” in selecting a plan. What you may not know is that these people often do not represent ALL plans and that means that you cannot rely on them to recommend the best plan in your case.
The only way I know to get around this is to go through the medicare.gov site I linked here and then to go to the actual insurance company to look deeper. Then enroll directly with the insurer. Like all healthcare and health insurance in the US, it is a shit show.
There are also two basic directions you can go. Traditional medicare + medigap + drug plan, and an Advantage plan. Not an easy choice. The Advantage plan will generally be cheaper out of pocket for healthy people or even people with moderate issues, and often the plan includes some additional coverage for things like hearing and vision for example but the network is a lot narrower and often does not include Tier I hospitals in particular and has a lot more annoyances like copays, coinsurance due, approvals, etc. Traditional medicare + medigap + drug plan on the other hand has many more provider options and includes a much bigger network which you might need for special situations. In terms of cost, it is probably cheaper for less healthy people, but for healthy people probably quite a lot more expensive. So bottom line, you have to decide if cheaper costs while healthy is more important then the larger network you might need in some cases. It is kind of a fateful decision as one can generally switch to and between Advantage plans during annual enrollment but for medigap plans, you can only switch to and between those without underwriting under certain very special conditions including during initial enrollment.
Anyway, my brain dump. If I missed something please comment. Good luck to you all.
Interesting enrolling in a Wellcare drug plan. I was able to enroll directly through the medicare site. For Blue Cross Medigap I used the Blue Cross site for my state.
I’ve been working on enrolling in Medicare for the first time. What I wanted to highlight for people is that there are various “agents” that present themselves and being helpful “advisors” in selecting a plan. What you may not know is that these people often do not represent ALL plans and that means that you cannot rely on them to recommend the best plan in your case.
The only way I know to get around this is to go through the medicare.gov site I linked here and then to go to the actual insurance company to look deeper. Then enroll directly with the insurer. Like all healthcare and health insurance in the US, it is a shit show.
There are also two basic directions you can go. Traditional medicare + medigap + drug plan, and an Advantage plan. Not an easy choice. The Advantage plan will generally be cheaper out of pocket for healthy people or even people with moderate issues, and often the plan includes some additional coverage for things like hearing and vision for example but the network is a lot narrower and often does not include Tier I hospitals in particular and has a lot more annoyances like copays, coinsurance due, approvals, etc. Traditional medicare + medigap + drug plan on the other hand has many more provider options and includes a much bigger network which you might need for special situations. In terms of cost, it is probably cheaper for less healthy people, but for healthy people probably quite a lot more expensive. So bottom line, you have to decide if cheaper costs while healthy is more important then the larger network you might need in some cases. It is kind of a fateful decision as one can generally switch to and between Advantage plans during annual enrollment but for medigap plans, you can only switch to and between those without underwriting under certain very special conditions including during initial enrollment.
Anyway, my brain dump. If I missed something please comment. Good luck to you all.
Interesting enrolling in a Wellcare drug plan. I was able to enroll directly through the medicare site. For Blue Cross Medigap I used the Blue Cross site for my state.