I have never said such a thing... for the fortieth time: I have private insurance not Mediare... try to open your brain to understand that if possible.
My reply was a general statement for everyone on the thread, not a personal attack on you.
I can see where you might be a little defensive tho, you are getting hit pretty hard here.
Just re-checked this thread, and it blossomed, and now I see a series of mis-statements you are making toward the end, now claiming that you do not have Medicare, for example your reply #301.
You DO in fact have Medicare! Guaranteed! You have it, you wrote yourself that you had it for 15 years, and you have NOT “opted out” — all you did is choose another variation of Medicare on the menu. Americans who qualify for Medicare are basically forced to use Medicare unless they completely opt out and pay cash, a surprisingly complicated thing to do even if you can afford it.
You are simply taking advantage of the Medicare Advantage system which allows you to get a Medicare supplement policy that itself gets paid by Medicare to to the main portion of Medicare for you in it’s own way. You premium your pay is only about as much as you would pay for many other Medicare supplements, and is no nowhere close to the cost of a premium on full private insurance.
In fact, full private health insurance in the usual form bypassing Medicare for you is essentially ILLEGAL and is not available!
I know for a fact that if you are hospitalized that the hospital will have to treat you just like it does MEDICARE, with all the extra rules and trepidations that they have to go through for Medicare. And moreover, if it is a teaching hospital then you are considered by the government to represent one more of the Medicare patients it is taking care of.
So you do not have private insurance, not have chosen an option of the Medicare program and are paying for a supplement.
I do not think you should distort this issue to the Freepers who are reading this who need to understand the details of the system we are fighting as we try to fight against government healthcare and welfare programs, and I hope my comment here clear it up for those who do not understand.