And it's time to talk about Medicare supplemental insurance again.
Alisande
8 years ago
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stacey_mb
8 years agoAlisande
8 years agoRelated Discussions
Medicare Supplements
Comments (3)Thanks a lot stargazer. I was leaning in that direction already because I'm covered right now by BC/BS through my employers plan. Is the overseas part of the plan the only reason you would have chosen the best plan? I'm not much of a traveler. The furtherest I may travel would be an Alaskan cruise, which I am very much interested in. Again, Thanks....See MoreLet's Talk About Insurance
Comments (16)We still own our last house, and not because we want to! We moved out of that house on Thanksgiving weekend of 2005 and spent the winter getting in shape to sell - taking off wallpaper, fixing the bathroom ceiling, cleaning, painting and mouse-proofing the basement, putting flooring on the steps to the basement, and painting the whole main floor. Then we had the original wood floors refinished. March 1, 2006 it went up for sale at $160,000. A year and a half later, we got our first offer, a rent-to-own situation for $140,000. Because she had credit problems to fix, we did a 2 year lease before purchase. By that time rolled around, the house was not worth the contracted price and the deal fell thorough. Going price for a house like ours? $85,000. This is where the insurance comes into play. We are paying high-cost landlord insurance. The agent told me that he is being told to stop the insurance on all empty houses! If we could not find a new tenant, we would have an empty, uninsured house. Luckily, we had my father-in-law's caregiver and her husband ready to move in. Part of the deal I made with her to get her to return to Michigan and resume her caregiving for Dad was that she could live in our old house at the same price she had paid to rent the two=bedroom apartment they had here before going back to Florida. So I am getting about half of the cost to keep up the house each month in rent, but am glad to have someone in the house at all. I told the agent that I would move back to the house before losing the insurance. It is only 5 minutes from my work. I could see DH on weekends and I could keep one of the three dogs we have there with me at the old house. There is so much vandalism of empty houses that insurance companies are no longer insuring vacant home in the Detroit area. ML, we have a high deductible, I thought - $1000. I have never heard of a deductible by percentage. How does it work? I agree that oceanside and barrier island properties should not be insurable if it means that we all have to help pay when they are destroyed. I expect to hear that a lot more areas join that list as global warming changes weather patterns. Places like Paterson NJ or the area around the Red River in North Dakota might not be insurable soon....See MoreMedicare supplemental insurance
Comments (58)chisue, understand the lesser of two evils. They use prednisone for my disease too. Thankfully, I've never been bad enough to have to use it on a daily basis. I'm allergic to one of the main drugs to treat my disease so if my current drugs really stops working I will have no choice but to take those awful , dangerous and expensive drugs. Hopefully it will never come to that. I have one older brother that did not move to the States when my family moved and so I've really been thinking about how much easier it was for him to retire in Canada. No jumping through all these hoops to figure out how to get his health care needs covered. Emma, what I understand is that they don't have to insure you if you have had a gap in insurance and are outside the 6 month open enrollment. Our situation was a little confusing to these insurers because our medicare part A automatically kicked in at 65 and our B took effect two years later when my husband turned 67. So they carelessly were just looking at the date part A kicked in and assumed we'd had a two year gap in coverage. Some asked if we'd been on cobra. They were asking for proof of insurance until I reminded them that medicare B was just starting and we were within the 6 month open enrollment. The drug plan still said that if I had not been covered they would have raised my premium.Not sure if that is legal under the 6 month open enrollment, but I didn't research it anymore sine it didn't apply to me. In my case, if I went without and then ended up going on one of those $3000 a month drugs and then decided at that time to get part D, no one would be too excited to insure me . And you can bet if one of my drugs was $3000 a month and they agreed to insure me, my premium would be pretty hefty. Our total costs for the two of us are around $480 a month United(AARP) is $116.78 for me, $121.94 for my husband. It is community based which means they can't raise your premium just because you are a year older. It goes up according to your zip code. In my state there were only two options for community based or issue age --the two that can't be raised because you are a year older. All the others were attained age which will go up for each year older you get. Then medicare B is $99.90 for each of us. I'm paying $27 for my part D and my husband picked the cheapest for 15 a month. I didn't figure it was as important to get the perfect plan with drug because it apparently is easy to change at the end of the year if what you picked didn't work out so well. It just seemed to me that there was a real learning curve to getting this all arranged. Dedtired, I'm confused why you would be paying 300 a month for medicare part B or something else?? something doesn't sound right....See MoreLet's talk about travel insurance
Comments (28)Very timely. Maire. I just bought my insurance for my Greece trip yesterday. I have learned that the sooner you buy the insurance the better. Ideally, I should have bought it as soon as I made my first payment for the trip. I'm also planning a trip to Spain and Portugal next year and I should have bought the insurance for that trip right away but did not. I bought a policy from CSA -- their Basic plan for my trip to Greece. I used Insuremytrip.com to make the purchase and also checked out Squaremouth.com. Both are reliable sites and very helpful. I recently spent four days in Canada and even bought health insurance for that trip. It only cost $18. I know Medicare would not cover me. On the flight there, a man in the seat behind us became violently ill. It was horrifying! He kept saying "I think I am dying". Then he said his daughter had had a 24 hour flu and his symptoms suggested he may have caught it. He was white as a sheet and burning with fever as well as having intestinal problems. Of course we freaked when we realized it could be contagious. So, I was VERY glad to be covered although we did not catch it. Great article. I really like Rick Steves. I will pass it along to my traveling companions. Thanks....See Moremurraysmom Zone 6a OH
8 years agoAlisande
8 years agochisue
8 years agomurraysmom Zone 6a OH
8 years agoAlisande
8 years agoAlisande
8 years agomare_wbpa
8 years agoAlisande
8 years ago
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