Health insurance can be a concern throughout a person’s entire life, but Medicare helps to ease that anxiety once retirement age comes around. However, that doesn’t mean that there aren’t any concerns about Medicare itself. Primarily, this consists of which programs to choose. As a senior citizen, healthcare coverage can be quite complicated, as the system is based upon a number of different forms of insurance, some of which are public, and others that are private. One person may require up to four different insurance programs; each of which needs…
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An overview of Medicare plans and what they cover
Medicare health insurance is a program that is federally administered and is made available to people with certain specific forms of disability, permanent kidney failure, or people who are 65 years of age or older. There are several different types of Medicare plans, the basics of which are as follows: • Medicare Part A – provides coverage for hospital care (among institutions that accept Medicare) and has no monthly premium for its beneficiaries, as long as they have been employed and have paid FICA taxes for a minimum of a…
Read MoreAnswers you should know to the FAQ’s about Medicare
Though it may feel overwhelming when you are faced with the most common questions to Medicare and Medicare Supplement Insurance, in truth, it doesn’t take hours of research to know what options are available to you. The most commonly asked question is regarding the difference between Medicare Advantage (MA) Plans, and the Original Medicare. The fact is that there are a number of important differences between them. The original plan is government Medicare, whereas MA is private Medicare. The two plans involve comparable out-of-pocket expenses. An MA plan is essentially…
Read MoreWhat consumers can expect from Medigap coverage
According to senior Medicare adviser from PlanPrescriber, Steve Zaleznick, consumers with original Medicare have been watching their insurance premiums steadily climb, and it is recommended that these individuals carefully consider their Medigap supplemental coverage in order to make sure that adequate protection under a less expensive plan. According to the director of benefits access policy of the Washington D.C.-based nonprofit advocacy organization, National Council on Aging, Hilary Sohmer Dalin, Medigap plans are designed to function with the original Medicare plan, and “Medigap wraps itself around Medicare and covers some or…
Read MoreStandard & Poor’s reports cost of Medicare increasing at its slowest rate in over half a decade
According to data recently released by Standard & Poor’s, over the last year, the revenue increase for hospitals resulting from Medicare patients was about one third over what had been seen from patients who are covered by some form of private health insurance. The S&P Healthcare Economic Index showed that the revenue from Medicare increased by 2.5 percent per hospital patient before June 2011, which is the slowest increase since January 2005, when S&P’s first started to monitor this income. That said, the revenue generated from patients who were covered…
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