A Journey Into The Unknown

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Added: Mon. Jan 11, 2010 8:25pm
Posted in: Aging

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     I have been working on one of the most important decisions I will have to make concerning the health of my husband. He will be going on Medicare soon and I must admit the decision to pick the “right” insurance policy or advantage plan as they call it has put me to the test to say the least. From understanding what “doughnut holes” are to what “tier” the medicine is, what’s covered, what co-pays have to be made, what zip code I live in to see if coverage is available are just a few of the things you have to consider. I remember reading Ann’s blog a few months ago about her husband’s prescription costing $7,000 and having to pay $4,000 up front. I couldn’t believe how a senior could afford to pay that much money. Well, here I am now trying to figure out what we will do to cover some of the medicines that have no generic alternatives. My husband’s first response of course is "I won’t take them". From what I understand there are Medicare specialists available to help but there is so much information for a person to absorb and understand that it boggles the mind. Even going on the Medicare site and listing the prescriptions so you can get a comparison brings up numbers that once printed out, takes a while to figure out.

    If you take plan B, you get money taken out of your check. That doesn’t include your prescription advantage plan. The monthly cost of “plan B” has gone up, the prescriptions have gone up but the yearly cost of living raise has been stopped for the next three years because our cost of living didn’t go up? Go figure that out. If you will be going on Medicare this year, good advice is to start looking months ahead of time as the research is very time consuming. If seniors didn’t have Medicare available, what would they do? For Medicare I am grateful but to make the right decision, there has to be an easier way to stream line the information.