Comparing Medicare Advantage Plans

[Mack]

Using Medicare's Plan Finder you can compare different Medicare Advantage plans based on cost, coverage, quality, and performance ratings. These ratings are a straight forward "star" rating, similar to how hotels or other services are rated. The lowest is one star, which means "poor", and the highest is five stars, which signifies "excellent". Most plans will fall somewhere between the extremes.

Medicare Advantage Plans are rated on 5 categories:

1. Ratings of Health Plan Responsiveness and Care
2. Managing Chronic Conditions
3. Health Plan Telephone Customer Service
4. Staying Healthy: Screenings, Tests and Vaccines
5. Health Plan Member Complaints, Appeals, and Choosing to Leave the
Health Plan

Each of the above categories has several criteria that goes in to the rating, so it is a fairly comprehensive study and rating of each plan.

The Medicare Plan finder is at:
https://www.medicare.gov/find-a-plan/questions/home.aspx

 

[mattspits]

Unfortunately, I have found that many of the plans don't make it into the plan finder. You may also want to consider visiting specific plan websites as well

 

[moh malekpour]

I compare all plans that are available in my area and came down to three of them now that I am going to pick the best one and enroll and get over with it but they are so similar that I have hard time to select one over the other two.
They all charge Part B premium
They all have my primary doctor and my specialist doctor on their network
They all have $0 charge for monthly health plan premium,$0 charge for monthly drug premium, $0 charge for monthly plan deductible, $0 charge for Doctors office visit, two of them have $0 cost for Specialist visit and one has $3 fee per visit, $0 charge for home health care, $0 charge for inpatient hospital care and $0 cost for Tier 1 generic drugs.
They have different fees for outpatient service, emergency care, ambulance service, kidney disease, skilled nurse service, tier 2 and 3 brand drugs and out of pocket spending limits.
They all offer a basic hearing aid, vision and dental. I need major dental help that they don't offer and I am thinking to get Delta Dental from AARP. I used to have Delta Dental 3 years ago and they are fine. I don't think I need a supplemental health insurance, do I?

 

[Mack]

If you have Medicare Advantage then you can not also get a Medicare Supplement as far as I know. A medicare supplement plan (aka Medigap) is only available with original Medicare.

 

[moh malekpour]

I didn't know that supplement health insurance has to be medicare supplement. I thought if you have medicare advantage plan and you need a supplement health insurance to pay for your deductible or other expenses, you still can buy a non medicare supplement health insurance from any health insurance company.

 

[Mack]

I didn't know that supplement health insurance has to be medicare supplement. I thought if you have medicare advantage plan and you need a supplement health insurance to pay for your deductible or other expenses, you still can buy a non medicare supplement health insurance from any health insurance company.

Maybe you can, I don't know, I thought you were talking about a Medicare supplement.

 

[mattspits]

You both are right. You are not allowed to purchase a Medicare supplement along with a Medicare Advantage plan. However, there are some extra coverages available like dental policies or hospital indemnity plans that are not Medicare related that you can purchase. Just make sure the plans are not garbage.