Saturday, November 19, 2011

The Medicare Maze

I spent most of yesterday trying to understand and navigate the complexities of Medigap coverage.

You see, this week Mr. AOW's Medicare card arrived in the mail.

Even though Mr. AOW will not reach the age of sixty-five for nearly three more years, he is automatically enrolled in Medicare thirty months after the qualifying event that disabled him in 2009 and has confined him to a hospital bed with a bedside commode in our living room.

Frankly, we've been looking forward to Medicare: Mr. AOW's private health-insurance premiums have risen from $500 a month to $700 a month over a two year period. The next premium hike for Mr. AOW is scheduled for June 2012, at which point the premium will be $908 a month. Mind you, the private health-insurance policy that Mr. AOW has is of the catastrophic type without prescription coverage and with a high deductible — two features which keep the premium far below that of gold-plated health insurance.

So, what's the point of this post? Shouldn't I be dancing for joy that, in a few months, Mr. AOW's health-insurance premium will drop from hundreds of dollars a month to $117.00 a month? Not exactly....

Read the rest
at Always On Watch.

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