A private insurer offering plan “M” must structure it according to “M” components. There is lot of companies offering car insurance but you have to choose most suitable one. There is NO penalty if you never buy a creditable drug plan. It might be worth it for you to take a non-creditable option and pay the penalty when you do move to a creditable plan. These teaching hospitals and centers offer cutting-edge medical care at a fraction of the cost you would pay a private medical clinic. Incidently, it makes no sense to pay more for a given plan – pick the cheapest private insurer for the plan you want. Within 2 weeks she had a brand new remodeled kitchen with nothing more than her deductible out of pocket. I know this will shock you – the agent will then try to up-sell you to a Medicare Advantage plan or a no deductible medigap plan.

My agent contacted me every year and even offered to do free financial analysis on my investment portfolios (NML and others). Because the insurance companies with the lowest premiums are very, very difficult to reach or insist you must be contacted by an insurance agent in order to buy the policy. Your policy contract should specify the minimum rate of return that the account can earn. How do you know who sells a policy in your zip code? The reason I learned as much as I know about Medicare is that I have been a volunteer on their Medicare Helpline for about four years. This will help you know which ones can actually provide what you need. If you keep a car any length of time (as you should, if you want to save a LOT of money) there comes a decision point where you need to decide whether to drop collision and comprehensive insurance.

There are 12 different types of plans defined by the government and each is designated by a letter A,B,C, M, N and so on. Sometimes the private plans are called supplemental insurance. Such an assessment is done by the surveyor and the evaluator appointed by the insurance company. In this case, the surety company is more interested in the credit standing of the company than the individuals. Playing catch up with a “me-too” approach is an increasingly difficult option; new entrants are already considering the adoption of more focused approaches. Most people who enroll will have no idea exactly what they are purchasing. And some people don’t do it. In the past I did not consider choices for people who are trying to cover non-Medicare eligible spouses. However, the brochure we just received does list what our choices are going to be even though the brochure is all about “Creditable Coverage” for prescription drug plans.

Ditto for the Prescription Drug Plan. There is a lot of language in the brochure about “Creditable Coverage” and penalties for not having proper prescription insurance coverage. The impact of not having creditable coverage is an important aspect to consider for non-Medicare eligible retirees buying insurance for Medicare eligible spouses. The Medicare Rights Center regularly does analysis on those helpline calls and the impact of various government proposals. Do not believe the IBM service center if they tell you that you cannot buy a medigap plan if you buy an IBM medical plan. Since IBM medical insurance is NOT a medigap plan you can buy IBM’s medical/prescription drug coverage and also buy a medigap plan. By law, you are only allowed to buy one medigap plan. There are services like acupuncture that are covered by IBM but not covered by a medigap plan. Unfortunately, IBM is not showing us their offerings in detail until November 2, 2011. That is too bad because it gives us less time to consider our options.