United States Seniors: U.S.-Government-Funded PBS Really Screwing up Medicare Advice in 2014

The United States government funded Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) web site and its affiliate web sites (and presumably in some of its broadcasts) is on track in 2014 to put out the most inaccurate information about United States Medicare ever. I noted one example (of many) on October 27. Similarly PBS is currently attacking the Part D Medicare drug plan program (link purposely not provided; why read crap?).

Most of the PBS Part D article says nothing but the obvious "Buyer Beware." It probably was too much, given the political purpose of all of the PBS blog posts, to try to explain the difference between the self-administered drugs covered by Part D and other drugs covered by Part B. But it is the PBS article's conclusion that bothers me most:

"Lots of people have Part D plans that are combined with basic Medicare Parts A and B coverage. Many people also use Medigap policies to fill coverage gaps in Medicare. Medigap benefits should, therefore, be considered in evaluating the Medicare drug plan that makes sense to you."

This conclusion is disjointed to a degree almost impossible to do by mistake. It has to be an intentional deceit except that I cannot figure what propaganda objective the PBS author is trying to accomplish. The first sentence is unrelated to the second and the second unrelated to the third.

• Sentence 1: Since everyone on Medicare has either Part A or Part B -- and almost all of us have both Part A and Part B -- then of course "Lots of people have Part D plans that are combined with basic Medicare Parts A and B coverage." But if the point is that "lots of people" only have A and/or B and D, that is incorrect and misleading. It might give the reader the impression that only selecting Original Medicare would be all that is needed to protect oneself from financial ruin, Nothing could be further from the truth. In fact:
• Only a very small percentage of the over 50,000,000 of us in the Medicare system have only A and/or B and D. Presumably these few of us are very rich or betting we will be very lucky.
• About 35%-40% of us have A and B and private retiree insurance (which may include private drug coverage or may be combined with a D plan).
• About 30% of us have A and B and public C insurance that is almost always combined with a D plan.
• About 15% of us are on A and B and Medicaid but might be in C or D or a private plan if the state Medicaid bureaucracy puts us there.
• (Sentence 2:) About 20% of us are on A and B and a private Medigap plan and almost of all of us in this category also find a D plan (unless we are very very happy with the VA or get some kind of separate retiree plan)
• Sentence 3: If you are in the last group, I have no idea why the author would advise "Medigap benefits should, therefore, be considered in evaluating the Medicare drug plan that makes sense to you." With very rare exceptions that predate 2005, no Medigap plan has drug coverage and nothing about any Medigap plan's benefits that I can think of relates to your choice of a Part D plan¹.

¹I'd be glad to be corrected on my last statement but I can think of nothing. Medigap covers gaps in medical services coverage but only of services covered by Parts A and B. Part A has nothing to do with drugs and Part B has nothing to do with self-administered drugs.