Switching from UHC supplemental plan-G to Cigna

Okay...just checking.

It's not clear how knowledgeable you are about how these plans work, so I'll summarize: Generally the only consideration for Medigap supplements is the price, because the benefits are the same, and payment happens automatically--if Medigap approves a charge, it pays its 80% to the provider and the supplement has no say in whether it covers your 20% on your behalf, and except in rare situations Medicare sends the bill to the Medigap company without your involvement.

There's almost never any need to contact your Medigap supplement company. So the quality of customer service is rarely an issue.

And since you're in a birthday rule state, you can switch between Plan Gs every year if the one you're on has an unacceptable-to-you price increase. You might be stuck with the increase for a few months, but not forever. With my AARP/UHC Plan G in Texas, the mid-year premium increase happens in July every year. My birthday increase happens in May, so I have two increases in quick succession every year.

Also, you didn't say if you need to use the birthday rule in order to change plans. All the birthday rule does is give you the option to change plans without medical underwriting; if you can pass underwriting, you can change plans any time of the year.

I noticed you mentioned community pricing in picking the Cigna plan. And the Medicare.gov site does say that plan is community pricing, but it's not. You can see this by entering different ages in the plan finder. For a true community priced plan, the premium will be the same for a 65-year-old and a 95-year-old. (You can see it in action by looking at plans in New York state, which does have true community pricing. Change the age all you want and the premium doesn't change.)

I ran numbers in your zip code (thanks for providing that) for the two plans you mentioned and I see no indication that the Cigna Plan G has community pricing--the premium is higher for every age I put in the plan finder.

AARP/UHC is the same, up to a certain age, because it's not truly community-rated, either. There IS a premium that is the same for everyone BUT younger people get a discount that goes down as their age goes up, resulting in the same effect as attained age premiums--premiums go up as you get older. However, the discount does eventually disappear, and everybody over a certain age DOES pay the same premium.

In your zip code with the Plan G currently offered by AARP/UHC, everybody 77 years or older who signs up for the plan today pays a premium of $273.

But with the Cigna plan, someone who's 77 who signs up for their Plan G today has a premium of $245. Someone who's 78 pays a premium of $254. Someone who's 88 pays a premium of $322.  Someone who's 100 years old pays $380 if they sign up for the Cigna plan today; if they sign up for AARP's plan today, they would pay $273.

The AARP/UHC plan at least bears a little resemblance to community pricing, in that everyone over a certain age does pay the same premium. I don't see any of that with Cigna's plan, and wonder if that's just inaccurate information on the website. It's definitely the first time I've ever heard of Cigna using the same faux-community pricing scheme that AARP/UHC does.

Being in a birthday rule state means you can hop from plan G to plan G every year. What I don't know is if you switch to Cigna this year and then switch back to AARP/UHC the year after that, what your premium or discount will be, since you'll be a new enrollee. I doubt it would be a huge difference but I don't know anything about it.

Of course there are lots of plans for you to switch between, but you're limited somewhat if having a gym membership is valuable to you, because it's not as common a benefit as it is under Advantage plans.

One thing about Silver & Fit compared to UHC's Renew Active (and Silver Sneakers) is that Silver & Fit has access to the places that Renew Active dropped last year, like Club Pilates and Orange Theory. However, what you get is a discount that they say is "20% to 70%" and finding out the actual discount for a given location can be difficult, but the ones I've been able to discover have been more like 20% (no big surprise).

And you pay for the actual membership for the premium gyms, which means you pay whether you go or not.

I'm pretty sure that with Silver & Fit, you can join as many standard gyms as you want; their non-Medicare plan, Active & Fit, allows you to join only one standard gym for free, and additional gyms cost you extra, and premium gyms of course cost more than that. (BTW, Active & Fit is available to the public.)

If I were interested in Silver & Fit, I'd definitely get them to pin down exactly how it works, and how it will cover the place(s) you want to go.

I do know that With Renew Active and Silver Sneakers, you can join as many gyms as you want, and pay nothing. But it's almost always only "the usuals"--LA Fitness, 24-Hour Fitness, community rec centers. Whether that's a benefit worth using depends on what's available in a given location and what it would cost to use them if you pay on your own.

And...uh oh.  I think Silver & Fit may be through Aetna and not Cigna.  Where did you get the information that you can add it to the plan you were looking at for $25?