topic Re: Switching from UHC supplemental plan-G to Aetna in Medicare & Insurance

Switching from UHC supplemental plan-G to Cigna

AdilL850029 — Fri, 13 Mar 2026 06:22:26 GMT

UPDATE: When I first posted this, I had mistakenly mentioned 'Aetna' instead of 'Cigna'. The post below is the same, I have just corrected the company name. I have also fixed the 'Subject' accordingly.

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I enrolled in Medicare 2 years ago in March and have a supplemental plan-G with UHC. I have not had any issues with coverage. However, the mid-year premium jump last year seemed a bit steeper than expected, and they have removed some of the "premium" wellness perks which they had offered.

Given the CA birthday rule, I am considering switching to 'American Retirement Life Insurance Company' (Cigna) which also has community pricing. Their premiums are about $161 compared to $190 for UHC. The Cigna plan does not include any gym benefits, but the basic ones can be added for $25 through 'Silver & Fit', which brings it almost in line with the UHC's premium. However, I don't know what the UHC premiums will be come Apr/May.

I will be sticking with plan-G, but wanted to ask if anyone has any positive or negative recommendations of moving to Cigna -- especially if someone has moved to Cigna and regretted it, that would be really helpful to know.

Thanks for any info you can provide,
-Adil

Re: Switching from UHC supplemental plan-G to Aetna

TRL1111 — Fri, 13 Mar 2026 02:40:25 GMT

@AdilL850029 wrote:
Given the CA birthday rule, I am considering switching to 'American Retirement Life Insurance Company' (Aetna) which also has community pricing. Their premiums are about $161 compared to $190 for UHC. The Aetna plan does not include any gym benefits, but the basic ones can be added for $25 through 'Silver & Fit', which brings it almost in line with the UHC's premium. However, I don't know what the UHC premiums will be come Apr/May.

Where are you getting information about this plan? From what I see, it's owned by Cigna, not Aetna.

What zip code are you in?

Re: Switching from UHC supplemental plan-G to Aetna

AdilL850029 — Fri, 13 Mar 2026 06:09:25 GMT

You are absolutely right! It is Cigna! My apologies for creating this confusion.

I got the info from Medicare's website when searching for supplemental plan G. I really don't know why my brain switched from Cigna to Aetna when I was typing my message.

And to answer your question, I am in 94040.

Re: Switching from UHC supplemental plan-G to Aetna

TRL1111 — Fri, 13 Mar 2026 17:28:23 GMT

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?

Re: Switching from UHC supplemental plan-G to Aetna

AdilL850029 — Fri, 13 Mar 2026 18:23:35 GMT

Wow! Thank you very much for such a detailed, helpful reply! I truly appreciate it and learned quite a few things that I wasn't aware of.

To answer a couple of your points: I was aware of being able to change the plans anytime. I am in good health and I think I wouldn't have a problem with underwriting, but just wanted to avoid the hassle of going through the process.

The Silver & Fit was mentioned in a PDF brochure sent by a rep at Cigna. I have attached a screenshot.

I would like to have gym access, and I realize it is with the basic 24-Hour Fitness type of places. (At the moment, I am enrolled in a community college fitness class, so I have not been using the service through my plan, but sooner or later I will be back there.)

Given all the details you have mentioned, I think I will just stick to UHC -- at least for now.

Again, I am really grateful for your helpful reply!

Cigna brochure

Re: Switching from UHC supplemental plan-G to Aetna

TRL1111 — Sat, 14 Mar 2026 00:01:05 GMT

Happy to be of help. Thanks for checking back in.

And thank you for verifying that Cigna uses Silver & Fit. I'll tell you--nailing down these gym benefits is hard. You'd think that it might be easier because only a few Medigap supplements include them, but you'd be wrong. 😀

Generally it's a bad idea to pick an insurance plan based on its gym benefit, but I think that advice assumes the usual situation, where people don't actually use it. I use the hound out of my Renew Active. In your case, where even if you can't pass medical underwriting you can change to a different Plan G every year, and all actual Plan G benefits are the same, there's no reason not to let a particular gym program guide your choice.

Re: Switching from UHC supplemental plan-G to Aetna

CBtoo — Sat, 14 Mar 2026 18:49:31 GMT

There is one aspect of a community risk pool that is useful as generally including all people of any age in the risk pool means that when you are older the rate will be lower than those that are in age attained and age signed up risk pools. As generally younger people use less health care than older people that helps keep down prices (and is also why the "discounts" are given as otherwise the premium prices would be higher for younger people in community rated plans). Of course in a "you can change without medical underwriting once a year states" this creates an issue for the risk pools as people will gravitate to the cheapest plans, regardless of the risk pool, which then drives up the prices of those plans in the future. Risk pool pricing only really works well if people can't switch between plans all the time.