My Supplemental Insurance Just Went Up

Healthcare costs have usually outpaced inflation, if I'm remembering my past 50 yrs correctly.

Yet another reason why I'm happy we got LTCi. The long period of low inflation enabled our policy benefits to keep reasonably in line with increased SCN and home healthcare costs.

We are Kaiser HMO members. Spouse has union retirement benefits including health, so our Senior Advantage plans are their top tier (Kaiser has many different levels of plan coverage) and cost about $200/mo. for both Spouse and me.

There are downsides - getting in to see specialists (unless it's an emergency, in which case Kaiser moves ASAP) sometimes takes time. But their preventive and GP care is very good, and their use of electronic records has really improved service.

We can switch during Open Enrollment to a Blue Shield PPO plan once a year, but have no plans to do so.
 
If you have a medicare supplement and your rates go up higher than they should, its time to get bids for a new plan through your agent. We changed a total of 3 times in 10 years. This is the 4th year with our current plan and its only gone up a little bit...probably for age adjustment. Philadelphia American Life Insurance Co. is the underwriter for our plan G. Wellcare is the drug portion - its like $18 a month.
 

We had WellCare take over our Aetna drug plan ….all of a sudden all our tier one drugs we got for 3 or 4 dollars were 30-40 dollars and now we had a 400 dollar deductible .

we were paying around 36 a month …we called e-health who shopped for us and found a 12 dollar a month well care plan for us with no deductible on our tier one drugs ..go figure
 
Dancing_Queen said:
What Humana plan do you have, Terry? If you're on Medicare, from what I can see, all they have is Advantage and stand-alone dental and drug plans. Besides, to my understanding, Medicare has only "Original Medicare" and "Part C -- Advantage Plans." Advantage plans are HMO's. You have to use the doctors on the list and, generally (if not always), you need referrals from a primary care physician to see specialists. Where have I gone wrong about this?
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I'm on an Advantage plan, which technically is an HMO, but it is affiliated with a local hospital and huge medical group and most doctors here, even if they are not in that medical group, also accept the plan. I have hundreds of doctors of every speciality you can think of to choose from and generally those specialists do not require formal referrals; if I want to choose my own specialist who does require a referral, I just call my primary care guy and he gives me a referral to the one I've selected.

All HMOs are not the same.
 
advantage plans can’t be judged most of the time in advance of pending issues ….like a resume they all look good .

the problem is when your gate keeper denies procedures , tests and treatment paths that govt not for profit Medicare would have allowed ..

so everyone is usually happy with their advantage plan — until they aren’t
 
mathjak107 said:
We had WellCare take over our Aetna drug plan ….all of a sudden all our tier one drugs we got for 3 or 4 dollars were 30-40 dollars and now we had a 400 dollar deductible .

we were paying around 36 a month …we called e-health who shopped for us and found a 12 dollar a month well care plan for us with no deductible on our tier one drugs ..go figure
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That was weird for sure. Ours as varied from 12-15 or even 18 bucks a month, but the generics have stayed the same. We do use GoodRX for a med hub takes. He takes 2 meds - I have taken nothing.
 
I havent heard how much my Medicare is going up.

My Arkansas BCBS Plan N went from 128.30 to 138.00. So Im paying more than any ss increase I am getting. Should be a law against this.

My wellcare drug plan is just for a place holder went from 19.18 to 12.90 from what I was told on the phone. I have never heard of anything like this go down. I will see when I get the notice.
 
Pauline1954 said:
I havent heard how much my Medicare is going up.

My Arkansas BCBS Plan N went from 128.30 to 138.00. So Im paying more than any ss increase I am getting. Should be a law against this.

My wellcare drug plan is just for a place holder went from 19.18 to 12.90 from what I was told on the phone. I have never heard of anything like this go down. I will see when I get the notice.
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Same here …but while it is a great deal on tier one and tier 2 drugs it is awful on 3&4
 
Liberty said:
If you have a medicare supplement and your rates go up higher than they should, its time to get bids for a new plan through your agent. We changed a total of 3 times in 10 years. This is the 4th year with our current plan and its only gone up a little bit...probably for age adjustment. Philadelphia American Life Insurance Co. is the underwriter for our plan G. Wellcare is the drug portion - its like $18 a month.
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Didn't you have to do underwriting to change to a different Part B supplement??
 
funsearcher! said:
Didn't you have to do underwriting to change to a different Part B supplement??
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Think it varies from state to state - here in Texas we go through underwriting to change but its not a big deal. Our agent won't sell advantage plans and makes it
very easy for us to change our medi-gap if needed.
 
I live in Pennsylvania, Montgomery County near Philadelphia. I used to be on Aetna Supplemental Plan F, but last year switched to Cigna after Aetna raised their rates too much. The agent said Cigna tends not to raise prices as much. This year Cigna Plan F is going up only $5 a month. For Part D, my Well Care plan is increasing from $26 a month to $69 a month, so I applied for a different Well Care Plan that's only $12 something a month. It's ok for the drugs I use, only Tier 1 and 2. Like someone else said here, Tier 3 and 4 are super high.
 

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