The Washigton Post on February 24 featured an opinion piece titled "Five Myths about Medicare." There are definitely five outrageous myths in this article. But they are not myths being cleared up by WaPo but old Medicare myths introduced by the author apparently to oppose Medicare premium support. Here's what WaPo says followed by the truth:
This article says “the majority of Medicare beneficiaries have supplemental insurance… However, Medicare coverage is still costly; beneficiaries pay relatively high deductibles and co-insurance.” Actually,
Medicare beneficiaries is NOT still costly with supplements; we seniors don’t pay high co-pays or deductibles IF we have private Medicare supplemental insurance. That benefit -- plus some protection against catastrophe -- is why we have to get private insurance (there is also an increasingly popular 'public' option, Medicare Part C, that supplements Medicare--see below)
More misleading by WaPo, the number of us seniors with supplemental insurance is much more than a “majority;” more than 90% of us on Medicare depend on supplements of some kind (see illustration).
Bankers Trust, which sells retiree insurance of various types mind you, has comissioned some probably reliable statistical research that proves the obvious: Baby boomers didn't/don't know that Medicare sucks.
We find out fast enough once we start looking at Medicare but maybe a little publicity about this new research will speed up the process and make our children better understand the benefits of Wyden/Ryan and similar proposals to modernize senior health care insurance.
I explain the situation in multiple places on this blog but let me try one more time:
There are some confusing news stories out Febuary 8 about a court ruling that found that seniors on Social Security cannot “turn down” Medicare Part A. As explained in the news reports the plaintiffs want to “turn down” Medicare Part A, the inpatient-hospitalization part of Medicare, because their private employer-retiree insurance is better. Currently about 50% of seniors nationwide get retiree healthcare insurance (but that number is dropping dramatically every year because few retiring baby boomers — except for government employees — had jobs that offered such a benefit).
According to the AP story:
“…(the plaintiffs’) private insurers limit their coverage because they are eligible for Medicare, but they would prefer the coverage from their private insurers.”
Huh? If that’s the case, then their private employee-retiree insurance is not better? How can insurance that limits their coverage be better? .
A variation on this story is happening among Massachusetts and Rhode Island government retirees but with a twist.
(Update: The original posting on this subjectm which appeared on Healthcare Savvy, had a partially misleading answer to question 9. It turns out that the "donut hole" is not going to disappear (or close) in 2020 but the discounts offered by pharmaceutical manufacturers will increase for exsiting drugs such that beneficiaries will only have to pay 25% of then current retail price.)
The Kaiser Family Foundation offers a multiple-choice “Medicare Quiz” on its web site because the subject is such a hot topic these days from a current affairs point of view. Unfortunately most of the quiz’s 10 questions really oversimplify a complex subject to the point that you could not answer the questions accurately without someone from Kaiser standing over your shoulder explaining them to you.
Here are the 10 questions with some background and my answers. I have no idea how recently the quiz was posted so my answers below may not agree with Kaiser’s. I used MedPAC – the Centers of Medicare/Medicaid Services (CMS) in-house version of the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) — as my source. Its most recent report is dated March 2011 and Kaiser may well have access to more recent data.
