Our Medical Group stopped accepting new Medicare patients 3 years ago. We just received a letter stating that, if the proposed plan to cut Medicare payments to physicians by almost 30% is accepted, our Medical Group (and many other doctors) will stop seeing even existing Medicare patients who already were patients 3 years ago - UNLESS we switched to a Medicare Advantage plan.
Of course, in our typical government fashion, it is likely that the vote on this plan will not occur until the end of the year - AFTER the allowed period for medical plan changes - so we won't know whether we need to make the change or not. The four in our family all have had our different supplemental medical plans for many years. If we change these plans, we can never go back to them.
What is most exasperating is our attempts to find concise comparisons between our plans and Medicare Advantage plans. We've called the Medical Group "Medicare Specialist" and our our current insurance "specialists", and they don't seem to know any more than we do (which is almost nothing). We are told that the Advantage plans don't cost anything at all, so we are just trying to find out what negatives there are. There is so much information it seems overwhelming. I just hope that those of you dealing with these same decisions are doing a better job than we are.
I can't believe there hasn't been a large protest against allowing these huge Medicare cuts to become law. Are these cuts really likely to happen?
Comments
Obama's great health care reform ended up so diluted that the con's seem to far outweigh any pro's.... compromise at its worst, I believe.