Lifetime- United Health Care Supplement

[JeffreyB893177]

 I am 73 and was paying $80 a month to use a Lifetime membership any time of the day, and now I found out that, effective 2/1/2025, my plan was canceled.  No notice, I found out when I went to the club.

United did not even give me a choice to pay an enhanced fee to cover Lifetime and if I stay at Lifetime, my membership fee will go up to around $250 a month.  This is on top of me loosing my Stretch Lab membership and YMCA.

[TRL1111]

You have a supplement, not Advantage, right?  Which YMCA did you lose? 

[JeffreyB893177]

 I have a supplement and it was the Houston YMCA, Trotter Branch

[TRL1111]

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@JeffreyB893177 wrote:

 I have a supplement and it was the Houston YMCA, Trotter Branch

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Did the Y deactivate your membership? I ask because there's a lot of confusion about Renew Active and YMCAs. Someone even started a petition to "Bring back the YMCA" when in actuality, only a handful out of hundreds of YMCAs had changed status (to "premium") with Renew Active effective 1-1-25, but only Medicare Advantage members lost access to those. Supplement holders still have access to premium locations.

The RenewActive.com website where you look for participating gyms doesn't show any premium gyms at all. From what I gather, the gyms shown on renewactive.com are available to Advantage members and to supplement holders alike. But supplement holders now have access to more gyms than Advantage members, and to see those, you have to log in to your UHC supplement account and search for gyms there. When I do that, the Houston YMCAs appear there as premium locations, including the Trotter branch. (And they do not appear on RenewActive.com.)

It appears there are now two levels of Renew Active--one for supplement holders and one for Advantage members--and Renew Active has done a horrible job explaining it. Or, actually, they haven't done any job explaining it at all. I've had to figure all this out myself. And as far as I know, the ONLY way to see what gyms are available to supplement holders is to already be a supplement holder. That's ridiculous.

I also went to the Houston YMCA website and on the "contact us" page there's a FAQ that says they accept Renew Active (along with Silver&Fit and Silver Sneakers).

Of course it's possible that the super-secret list of premium gyms is wrong, and the YMCA's website is wrong, too. If the Y kicked you out, saying they no longer take Renew Active, maybe they're right. But it's also possible there's a misunderstanding.