Supplementary Health Insurance Plans

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It is essential for elderly patients with medicare to obtain a supplementary health insurance plan. Medicare covers 80% of the medical costs, and the patient is responsible for the remanding 20%. Twenty percent may not seem like a big amount but it truly is once medical bills start piling up for patients.

Keep in mind that elderly patients are more likely to be hospitalized because of their high risks and medical conditions. Hospital bills along side transportation costs (Ambulance services) can really put a dent in a patients pocket. The majority of patients that are on medicare only have one source of income, social security.
"What's Medicare supplement (Medigap) insurance?"

“A Medicare supplement (Medigap) insurance, sold by private companies, can help pay some of the health care costs that Original Medicare doesn't cover, like copayments, coinsurance, and deductibles.

Some Medigap policies also offer coverage for services that Original Medicare doesn't cover, like medical care when you travel outside the U.S. If you have Original Medicare and you buy a Medigap policy, Medicare will pay its share of the Medicare-approved amount for covered health care costs. Then your Medigap policy pays its share.

A Medigap policy is different from a Medicare Advantage Plan. Those plans are ways to get Medicare benefits , while a Medigap policy only supplements your Original Medicare benefits.” ("Official U.S. Government Site for Medicare) 

With a supplementary health insurance plan, that plan would cover the 20% that medicare will not cover. The majority of all major health insurance companies offer a medigap plan which is classified as a supplementary plan. Some of the options for a supplementary plan are:  BlueCross Blueshield, Cigna, Aetna, Compass Rose, Golden Rule, AARP, Humana, and etc. A lot of patients even keep their previous insurance that was offered through their job when they were employed, making medicare their primary and the other a secondary.

Many of the patients at the physician office that I work at, have medicare as a primary and tricare as a secondary. For those patients who just have medicare, we do not collect a co-pay since we do not know before hand how much the total visit will cost. Our billing Administrator files the claims to medicare and the patient is then billed the remaining balance. This method also results in a collection of debt for patients who are unable to pay in full their account balances.

We often see that older patients make attempts to make payment arrangements by paying something on their accounts but we rarely see patients without debt.

We encourage all patients with medicare to obtain a supplementary health insurance plan in order to save the patient costly services that medicare will simply not cover 100%.

Works Cited:

"What's medicare supplement (medigap) insurance?." The Official U.S. Government Site for Medicare. N.p.. Web. 7 Nov 2013. <http://www.medicare.gov/supplement-other-insurance/medigap/whats-medigap.html>.