Silver Sneakers being droped by AARP recommended insurer

[JonathanC64540]

In Pennsylvania, I switched to Humana supplemental.  Great customer service, paying less for more .... AND Silver Sneakers.  Now if there is an alternative to AARP for seniors to that isn't i the pocket of the insurance, pharmaceutical, and travel companies, and that doesn't try to manipulate and screw over vulnerable seniors, I'll sign up immediately!

[AlanW174645]

Reminder.  You can change your Medicare medigap/supplement plan any month,   Advantage plans can only be changed Oct to December.

If you have a pre-existing condition that requires an underwriting, in California you can change supplement on your birthday month without an underwriting.  In Ohio you change change to Medical Mutual until end of june without an underwriting.

AARP-UHC is usually more expensive than your state's other supplement insurance companies (which also have silver sneakers) because UHC gives AARP 5% or so commission.

Look up your states Supplement plans that support silver sneakers!

In Ohio, I have Fitworks and LA fitness and YMCA for free.  And other fitness centers when we travel to Florida in winter.

AARP get 60 to 70% of it's revenue from insurance companies (not membership fees).

[c829263s]

Additionally, the new  AARP “special offer” of 50% off at LA Fitness is nonsense.  The regular LA Fitness monthly rate for a single site is $24.95/month.  The monthly rate (single site) through AARP is $22.00, which, I am told is half off the $44.00/month which AARP is charged by LA Fitness.  Even factoring in the exemption from a $99 initiation fee and the $40 yearly extra fee charged by LA Fitness, over the long haul this is still not 50% off. Next year I’m exploring my options. The sellling point for the AARP Plan for us was the Silver Sneakers gym membership.  

[JonathanC64540]

Just joined AARP for the purpose of using UHC as my supplemental, only to discover that Silver Sneakers was discontinued.  Disappointing.  Fortunately, I found this forum first before signing up.  UHC has now lost me as a potential customer and I will just let AARP expire in a year.  There are other insurance companies that still offer SS.  Besides, there are already too many ads from AARP trying to separate me and my hard earned money, some of dubious value or savings.  Thanks all for your insights.  This helped me from making a mistake. 

[kathprewitt]

I would love to know who exactly made this decision   I’m sure UHC intends to profit in some way and estimates of those future profits were presented to management. I would assume they would have estimated the loss UHC would incur due to this business decision. Not only those people who will get rid of UHC ASAP but future signups. Finally this UHC decision most likely drives the healthiest people out of their plans

[MaryanneM270077]

Not only is there more mail from AARP trying to sell stuff and to “remind” me of all of the benefits of belonging, there is also an email and snail mail deluge from United Healthcare touting their so-called ‘great new Health and Wellness program’  WHAT A CROCK OF ..........

In no way is HealthYourWay an acceptable replacement for Silver Sneakers - my birthday is coming up in July and it will be time to leave both UHC and AARP.

[johngraves01]

Have any of you who have posted to this thread seen a major increase in "offers" from AARP via e-mail?  I'm getting a lot of e-mail from AARP.  Of course none of the "offers" are of interest to me, but it looks like someone is tracking who is posting and using this info to mount a marketing campaign designed to tell us how wonderful AARP is!

[MiriamJ849239]

Renew active...what a joke.  Instead of helping pay our exercize expenses, we get another glossy, coffee table magazine with pictures of other people(models) exercizing.

[MiriamJ849239]

I totally agree that AARp seems to be doing a bait and switch ad.  We were told when we moved to this area we would have Silver Sneakers...We go to our local Y, and they tell us United Healthcare has dropped the program.  Now we get this nice glossy Renew magazine where we can watch other seniors exercizing, instead of exercizing ourselves!!Big woop!

[GailL1]

---

@sf2889546 wrote:

 I will definitely look next year to another plan that has it, I feel that we've been snookered and I will also not renew my AARP membership after it expires.

---

If your live in a state that has the "Birthday Rule" or some other special condition that forces you to wait til the month of December for your best results, Fine  But if not, you don't have to wait - you can switch Medigap plan anytime but you might have to go through underwriting.

Medicare.gov - Switching Medigap Policies