Most doctors warn patients that Medicare Advantage plans may seem like a good deal until you realize they cost more while covering less than Medicare, with more administrative headaches for the doctor and you. These include precertification of care, even if it is chiropractic, a cost-effective option that can lower healthcare costs by keeping you out of the medical system unless it is necessary. United Healthcare, under Optum, its division that handles chiropractic and other therapeutic interventions, requires precerts, while other Medicare Advantage plans do not. These precerts do nothing to improve the quality of care and get in the way of the care you need. If you are 65 years old, you have a choice of Medicare or Medicare Advantage. Get it right the first time. Medicare Advantage is the same dysfunctional system you can opt out of by choosing regular Medicare when you reach 65 years of age. Medicare Advantage plans have been overcharging Medicare and have smaller, more restrictive networks, and often have little or more expensive options outside of your home state. The government is aware that Medicare Advantage plans have been embellishing the conditions their patients experience, and it is costing Medicare billions in overpayments to those carriers. As someone who has been under Medicare, the plan is seamless, and they will automatically bill your secondary for you. While you must also choose a drug plan, those plans are generally well priced to supplement Medicare, helping you avoid the complexities of the drug benefits under Medicare itself. Perhaps this is why so many people sign up for a private Medicare supplement for drugs such as Wellcare. Patients who sign up for Medicare through CMS are enrolled in a public-private partnership. Unlike the scare tactics and misinformation we hear about choosing a new plan yearly, signing up with regular Medicare initially is more cost-effective. Doing so after you realize that the Medicare Advantage plans you chose were more problematic than you realized can be more costly if you wish to switch back. You can follow our blog on how to sign up with Medicare through CMS here. This year, Medicare premiums are going up, as are the deductibles. The big, beautiful bill had incentives to increase the cost of regular Medicare by rolling into it the cost overruns from Medicare Advantage plans. This does not sound like a strategy to reduce healthcare costs, does it? Why incentivise inferior plans that drive costs higher while frustrating the public they serve? It is no secret that healthcare costs are out of control, partly due to administrative burdens, which are much worse in Medicare Advantage plans, and those burdens drive costs recouped by large hospital systems. Only Medicare has the ability to actually negotiate with these systems. The drug portion of Medicare is now able to further negotiate drug prices, including the GLP-1 weight loss drugs, which is good for our wallets. What is actually driving the costs of care? Insurance companies Administrative costs are typical of most private insurance plans. Drug prices and the overprescription of them. High specialist salaries and costly doctor visits. Wall Street companies are buying healthcare practices and forcing prices up. Hospital monopolies are drowning the competition. Rewarding procedures and not results. Too few doctors is partly caused by a care model too focused on keeping patients in the system and passing them around from specialist to specialist. This is not healthcare; it is a conveyor belt. Overpriced ER services that offer poor service. The choice is obvious; everyone should enroll and have Medicare. Eliminating the boiler rooms selling inferior plans that take your Medicare Premiums while giving you less is insane. Unfortunately, most people think this is saving them money until their services are either not covered or they realize that their out-of-pocket costs for care that can help them the most are not covered, not in their network, or worse, not covered when they travel out of state. If you want the free gym membership, it comes with AARP Medicare supplements that will cover most out-of-pocket costs. These plans will pay all that Medicare pays for and then most of your other costs as well. The only catch is that the service must be covered under Medicare. Most Medicare Advantage plans have the same limitation, which is most evident for those who use chiropractors. The chiropractic profession has worked diligently to correct the limitations of coverage affecting all services other than Manipulation, which is covered. Patients who visit a chiropractor should be able to have the same coverage as is seen elsewhere, and patients find that chiropractic care helps simplify their care while improving how they feel and function as they age. The Chiropractic Medicare Modernization Act legislation will resolve this problem that has existed since Medicare began in the 1970s. This should be an important part of healthcare reform in the USA. Help us get this legislation passed and signed by visiting this website. If Congress wants to reduce costs, here’s how to do the right thing. Forget the lobbyists. We need healthcare simplification. Rolling out Medicare to everyone over time is the answer. Instead of the harm being done and debating medical supplements that expire at the beginning of the year, Medicare has been proven to work well, and seniors like it much better than Medicare Advantage plans. Medicare is scalable but will take time. Americans need a health safety net. That is Medicare. Is it perfect? No, but it can be improved; however, simplifying and improving access and costs, as other countries do, is mandatory. Legislators on both sides of the aisle are warming up to the idea. 1. Fix the physician funding formulas 2. Full inclusion of chiropractic care. 3. Inclusion of other competitive healthcare providers that provide badly needed competition to the growing healthcare monopolies. 4. Better negotiation of drug prices, unlike what we have done till now. We can no longer afford care that rewards procedures and processes but not results. We need things to change. Allowing the constant cost increases yearly that do not improve outcomes is ridiculous and wasteful. Currently, there is no plan other than to make it cost more or give you less. We need better, not more. Better begins with Medicare and the elimination of wasteful Medicare Advantage plans.