Medicare Advantage Plans: What You Need to Know

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This is continuing with the Medicare series from Kathleen Downes. While she knows an awful lot about this stuff, you need to do your own due diligence! Take what she is suggesting and roll with more research of your own!

In this post, we’ll be talking about:

Medicare Part C: Medicare Advantage

As we were talking about in the last post (on the 4 Parts of Medicare and Why They Matter), Medicare Part C is also known as Medicare Advantage. These plans are actually available for purchase. This can be a good idea for some people, but in deciding if it’s right for you/yours, pay attention to the following:

4 Things to Research:

1. What providers participate: Medicare Advantage plans cover smaller networks, so make sure the people that you want to tend to your body are the ones that are in the plan! This is not just your doctor: Durable Medical providers, hospitals, specialists – you need to make sure they are ALL covered in the Medicare Advantage plan..
2. What coverage rules apply: you want to be sure that whatever is covered is what you want to have covered!
3. Cost-sharing rules: look into how much you’ll be needing to pay. This is really important because you can have more in back-end costs with Medicare Advantage
4. Any additional premiums (Center for Medicare Rights 2021): you don’t want to have any surprise costs or bills!

Here is a good video that covers in more detail what to be aware of, and what to look for in Medicare Advantage plans:

Pros and Cons of Medicare Advantage Plans:

(this video is really good: worth the whole half hour)

Links to Learn More

You can learn more about Original Medicare vs. Part C here: The Choice Between Original Medicare and Part C

Here is a chart that compares Original Medicare and Part C Original vs. Part C Chart

Find out when you can sign up for an MA plan or go back to Original Medicare here: Part C Enrollment  (they also have a booklet that you can download)

Kathleen Downes

Kathleen Downes (she/her/hers) is a licensed social worker and activist for disability justice from Floral Park, New York. She was born with cerebral palsy and enjoys doing advocacy work for people with all types of disabilities. She volunteers to create educational programs for families of disabled youth through a small non-profit in the New York area.

A two time graduate of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, she holds a master’s in social work and a bachelor’s in community health and rehabilitation studies.

 She is particularly passionate about long term care policy and strengthening the Medicaid program.

Kathleen blogs at The Squeaky Wheelchair and has been featured in The Huffington Post and in the online publication of the Women’s Media Center.

In her free time she enjoys reading, writing, spending time with her dog, taking seated dance classes, and learning new things.

www.thesqueakywheelchairblog.com

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