Medicare needs to change to add dental, hearing and eye care!

[jk84689993]

AARP needs to get involved in changes for the betterment of its members. 
medicare should cover dental, eye and hearing needs. 

[john258]

You are correct and money in the Trust Fund was a major concern for any of this we would not have a Medicare Program because the Trust fund was set up to perform as it is and  should not be used to judge what is or is not needed. I hope you realize that many of the dental, eye, and hearing programs in the various Advantage programs offered by Insurance Carriers are really just discount program which cost the carrier very little or nothing to offer. The  cheapest costs will be had when all are in the same program. Medicare talks about a 90-95% loss ratio. A private Carrier gets nervous when the loss ratio of a policy or program hits about 60%. Medicare had to agree to pay the carriers 15% more than it cost medicare to provide the base benefits for the advantage programs. That was supposed to reduce to zero over time but has not. Right now spend your time working to keep Medicare period. We have people who want to kill it by making it short term funding, use a sales tax to pay for it, bring more carriers into it. One program is the  cheapest form of coverage  for all  provided by Medicare. There are experts who can handle this area. Sadly they are not in here nor in making the current proposals in government.

[Tonster521]

@jk84689993 If there was a huge surplus of money in the Supplemental Medical Insurance (SMI) Medicare Trust, I would say "go for it". Spending any surplus on dental, vision, and/or hearing may help folks who are unable to pay for such expenses. However, there is not any surplus. So, the government through the collection of taxes will pay the greater portion (75%) of the cost of such benefits if added to Medicare Part B or another alphabet yet to be named. As you may not know, Medicare Part B is funded approximately 25% by folks enrolled in Part B and approximately 75% by the government general account. Because the chances of going bankrupt due to dental expenses, glasses (vision), or buying a hearing aid are minimal, these are not "front burner" expenses or issues. 

[RonaldS150258]

Definitely needed. These are three main things that affect when you get older and much needed.