The necessity for a secondary is to cover the 20% Medicare doesn’t cover on surgeries, hospital stays, test, Cardio test aren’t cheap, nor are cancer test/treatments, Physio Rehab and medicine. Hubby had a BP spike spent 3 days in the ER as the small hospital had no bed available. $50K the 20% would have been $1,000 out of pocket with out a secondary. My ER trips for drug reactions peg in at about $20K each if they don’t keep me for observation. Thumb surgery came in around $60K. Hubby’s partial knee about the same.
The 2% SS COLA raise we got this year nearly all went to Medicare. I got $1.00 more per month, the other $133 went to Medicare Premiums.
We are Medicare/Tricare Life as hubby is 20 yr career Navy Ret. SCPO. While we have freedom of doctors/hospitals, meds are another story, DoD Mandates that daily meds are Base Pharmacy or Express Scripts. Cumbersome process. ER scripts or 1 time ones can go to Private pharmacy that excepts Tricare. Co-Pays went up again this year too. Many meds were dropped off the Formula, and are no longer covered by Tricare Life. Nexium got nixxed, ES won’t cover it. They will now only cover Prilosex, Protonix/Aciphex, can’t take any of the 3. Now have to go OTC out of pocket. ES changes DAW’s to generics and no granutee that you get the same med each time. That is a problem for those with med reactions. Not all generics are equal to Name Brand in strength.
Thanks! I worked in hospital management up until a week ago so understand about what insurance pays (or doesn’t)! Some of my coworkers are recently on Medicare so we’ve been discussing the options. Now to work harder to stay healthy...