Is AARP United Healthcare "Community Based" pricing or not

[usssa9]

Medicare.gov has this listed: 

"Community Pricing: Premiums are the same no matter how old you are. Premiums may go up because of inflation or other factors."

 

So, is it this, where everyone goes up the same each year, or is it "Age Attained Pricing like most of the other plans? I joined AARPUH because of the supposedly balanced cost adjustments for all, not per how old each person is, or how ill. If it is not the case, them Medicare needs to change this, as it VERY different coverage than attained age.

Mine went up substantially now, 2 years in a row. Plan G.

Thanks

[TRL1111]

I call it faux-community-rated.  

It's technically community-rated, but everyone under a certain age gets an age-related discount so people don't actually all pay the same premium.  

The age-related discount declines every year until it gets to zero at about age 80, depending on the plan.  After that, everybody does pay the full premium regardless of age.  So it's community rated for the portion of the population that is too old for the age-related discount.

Also, the age-related discount declines by 2% on my Plan G, which most people think means a 2% increase in the premium every year until it phases out, but the percentage is on the discount and not on the premium itself, so the first time the discount declines by 2% it actually translates to a 5% increase in the premium.  This happens in your birth month, and there's also an across-the-board increase for everyone in the middle of the year.  On my plan, the age-related discount didn't go down for the first couple of years.

Also, when I signed up at age 65, my AARP/UHC Plan G had a guaranteed premium for six months.  My birthday is in May, so the premium was locked in in the middle of the year when the premium for that plan was raised for everyone.  But my increase didn't happen until the six-month guarantee expired.