I have a question about something...

MarciKS

MarciKS

Dust Bunny Whisperer
Location
Great Plains
i keep seeing an ad for a $1200 healthy allowance grocery card for medicare recipients that is a temporary offer and it supposedly won't affect your benefits. is that legit or even true? from what i understand of medicare i find it tough to believe. does anyone know about this kind of stuff?
 
MarciKS said:
i keep seeing an ad for a $1200 healthy allowance grocery card for medicare recipients that is a temporary offer and it supposedly won't affect your benefits. is that legit or even true? from what i understand of medicare i find it tough to believe. does anyone know about this kind of stuff?
Click to expand...
I've seen the ads, but never with the sound turned up. I believe it's a benefit of switching to a medicare advantage plan from the company that's offering the plan. Some advantage plans have other benefits like vision, dental, etc, depending on what you go with. From the visuals I'd say the marketing approach is border line of being deceptive.
 
MarciKS said:
i keep seeing an ad for a $1200 healthy allowance grocery card for medicare recipients that is a temporary offer and it supposedly won't affect your benefits. is that legit or even true? from what i understand of medicare i find it tough to believe. does anyone know about this kind of stuff?
Click to expand...
Highly unlikely from Medicare or an advantage plan. Some will give you a flex benefit of up to $200 or so per quarter, but nothing more. This is likely a bait and switch to get info or talk you into something.
 
Last edited:
bobcat said:
Highly unlikely from Medicare or an advantage plan. Some will give you a flex benefit of up to $200 or so, but nothing more. This is likely a bait and switch to get info or talk you into something.
Click to expand...
Could be an advantage plan or a brokerage for multiple advantage plans. The reason I believe it could be is that we almost signed up for one a couple years ago. I should say my wife, as I wasn't on medicare yet. We got a call one afternoon from company X, which was my wife's supplement company. Since it was her company I handed her the phone. The person on the other end was talking about all the advantages of the plan which did include $500 for groceries, and there was something else, like a pharmacy benefit, also vision and dental stuff. We were assured our doctor was on the list of providers...She was also assured she had 30 days to switch back so she agreed to it.

Not only was her doctor not on the list of providers, per his office, the other benefits would have required us to drive all the way to the other side of the state. At the time it seemed had we lived on the other side of the state it would have been a better deal for us, but it wasn't to be. They didn't want to switch her back, even though we weren't more than 48 hours of her agreeing, but the state SHIIP office was very helpful and we got that taken care of in about 30 mins with their intervention.

This past 12 months we found out how lucky she was to have just stuck with her regular medicare, so I'm no fan of advantage plans.
 
I have a friend in Connecticut on MediCAID who gets a card for groceries every month. I'll have to ask her where it comes from.

I would call the number and see what they tell you - ask them some questions.
I suspect that you would have to be on some other assistance to qualify.
 
I get Medicaid and have UHC for my supplemental insurance. I get $149. monthly for food and health related items. Yes, I am low income and have a chronic health condition (Lymphedema) so qualify for the benefit card. You can also do certain things that earn you rewards which add money to the benefit card.
 
the thing is when i do a search for it online i can't find anything about it. that's why i was asking cuz it seems too good to be true to get a $1200 grocery card.
 
that is the key is if on Medicare but also so low income enough to qualify for Medicaid too.
lots of extras offered for what they call "Duel eligible" sounds nicer than retired with nothing.

The reality is if you have no retirement income other than SS and saved nothing they give you little bits to survive,
 
I’m not sure if Medicare is being generous or if the insurance company is squeezing it out of their government subsidies.

In this area they are definitely real and seem to be based on being in a generally low income zip code coupled with being a low income individual.

My biggest concern would be how the insurance company is to deal with on authorizing services and paying claims and not just focusing on the benefit card.

It might be worth talking to some of the folks at the hospital about how it is to deal with the various companies or sit down with one of those few based healthcare navigators that get a referral fee from the insurance company for their services.
 
As @katlupe said, when you have a chronic health condition and are low income, Medicare will put you on a SNP(special needs plan) advantage plan that goes along with Medicaid.
I have Devoted Health and have basically the same type of plan as Katlupe has, and I get an OTC allowance and a food card. The rewards she is talking about are for having medical tests done, like bone density, and things similar to that. Some companies send you a debit card with money for that and other companies offer several kinds of gift cards to choose from.

The ad that offers the $1200 food card benefit is probably legitimate, but it would depend on the size of family, and your income, as to how much food benefit you get, and the $1200 might be an annual benefit of $100 per month.
If you find a Medicare insurance broker, they can compare plans that you are eligible for, for ALL companies that serve your area, and then they will help you choose the plant that best meets your needs. We have had the same agent for the last 10 years and see him once each fall to go over the new plans and changes to the plan we have now.

Also, you can go online, choose a company and see what plans they offer. You do not need to talk with someone on one of those TV ads, you can just go and read it on the company website.
Last year, when we received the Notice of Change (which you get each year from your company), it said that our vision benefit was going to be less in 2026, so I went online and checked plans for other companies, that way when we met with our agent (actually it was just a phone conversation ) I already had an idea what other companies were offering, and what questions I needed to ask our agent.
 
neighbors jump thru all the hoops to have about 5 preventative tests to "earn" gift cards..
Not sure if it is worth all the time for appointments and possible co-pays to "earn" gift cards.
The companies are getting reimbursed and perhaps even negotiating for extra money since more people are "needing" these tests etc
 
For the past couple of years DH and I have each gotten cards that are loaded with $50 per quarter. Use it or lose it.

The money can be spent on certain fresh healthy foods, vitamins, supplements, medical gear and I'm not sure what else. Problem is, nearly all my fresh food shopping is done at small chains and independent grocers who aren't in the program. 🤷‍♀️

Therefore, I use them at Costco for vitamins and supplements.

We've never been asked for income information by our Advantage plan provider, have no chronic health conditions and are not low income.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top