Medicare - A Good Value? What, if any, improvements would you want to make to the Medicare program ?

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@GailL1 wrote:

Now, next question - How Much Would You Be Willing To Pay for The things you listed?

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Ha!  I can answer that on behalf of pretty much everyone here, based on their posts:  $0.  You've seen them squawk about losing premium gyms under their gym benefit.  I asked several times, to different people, how much they'd be willing to pay for a benefit that costs UHC $31 every time they walk in the door, and got crickets.

Is Medicare good value?  I'll say!  My individual insurance premium before I was eligible for Medicare was about $1,000 a month, for a deductible of many thousands of dollars.  My boyfriend won't be eligible for Medicare for another seven years, and the premium for his individual policy is already $1,000 a month, albeit with a low $2000 deductible; we'd change to a much higher deductible since he's healthy, but his plan is grandfathered in and we don't dare make a peep...  

Because we travel fulltime and his policy provides access to the Blue Cross network all over the country.  There are POS plans available to him now, but they're also over $1,000 a month and for $1,000 he'd have a deductible of at least $5,000 but, most importantly, we don't know how they work, with POS being some sort of hybrid between HMO and PPO.  If nothing else, all my Medicare research has made me realize it's dangerous to buy insurance if you don't know how it works (assuming you have the money to allow you to make choices).

Because he has access to such a big nationwide network, his policy is almost as good as my Medicare + Plan G supplement when it comes to access to providers, but at a much higher price (my premium is $335/month, his is $1,000 a month).  Out-of-pocket expense wise, my maximum exposure is $257, and his coverage doesn't even kick in until he pays a $2,000 deductible and I don't even know what his out-of-pocket maximum exposure is.

Maybe praising Medicare by comparing it to the individual insurance market is faint praise, but it's my reality.  And, don't forget that people pay more for employer-provided health insurance than they usually realize, because it doesn't come directly out of their own pocket (the employer pays some chunk of it on their behalf, presumably taking that into account when setting the employee's pay).  It's another of the nuances when it comes to health insurance that people often don't understand.

We have advantage plans, so those things are included. One problem with advantage plans is that they are not taken by most doctors in small town USA. My sister-in-law lives in one of those towns and not a single doctor took an advantage plan. Another problem is the in-network, right now my wife may lose one of the hospitals because they haven't been able to extend their contract. Of course this happens even in the private sector.

Good topic, looking forward to seeing different thoughts.

I thought you had started a good post, as much as people complain you would think they would have some idea on how to improve.