Much has been written about senior citizens and retirees who have been duped into buying into the so called Medicare “advantage” plans (more appropriately called dis-advantage). However, there has been relatively scant publicity about the widespread practice of former employers colluding with the UHCs, AETNAs, HUMANAs and other giant insurance companies to FORCE their retirees, against their will, out of traditional Medicare and into an inferior private, dis-advantage plan.
Each time I write about this, inevitably, several people will reply saying, “That’s nuts. Nobody can do that, I PAID for my Medicare out of my own pocket”. So, let’s get that misconception out of the way right now. Sorry to say, Yes they can force you out of traditional Medicare, under certain circumstances, (i.e, if you retire with health benefits and your former employer supplements your Medicare with a secondary/supplemental retirement health insurance benefit, then your former employer can FORCE you off of your real Medicare and into a very inferior, private dis-advantage plan). Many, many retirees have exactly that kind of retirement health insurance benefit. That is all thanks to a guy named Billy Tauzin and President Bush and other unsavory politicians in 2003. Tauzin retired after helping to get that passed with a 2 million dollar a year Big Pharma job payback. www.commondreams.org/...
So here are the success stories I know of, so far, of retirees who managed to fight back and win their David-vs-Goliath battles against their own State, City and County governments and Unions that were/are trying to FORCE them off their traditional Medicare that they paid for all their lives and into an inferior ‘advantage’ plan that enriches the private insurers--while denying patients’ life saving treatments---all in order to maximize Big Insurance’s profits.
179 Cortland County, NY retirees: www.wskg.org/…
250,000 New York City retirees: www.thecity.nyc/…
50,000 Delaware State retirees: www.delawareonline.com/…
5600 Vermont State retirees: www.dailykos.com/...
Unfortunately, with the possible exception of Vermont, the rest of these retirees still face having to continue their relentless efforts to fight the schemes of their former employers colluding with Big Insurance to sell them out of traditional Medicare. The NYC and Delaware retirees’ court wins are both under appeal by their former municipal employers. The Cortland County legislature took the cowardly route of revoking their forced ‘advantage’ enrollment 2 days before a Court ruling so they could try to re-work the hasty, buffoonish method by which they enacted it, in order to try again this year with an attempt to make it look like they actually did some research.
The way it all happens, is a broker or company will approach a city, state, county or private employer and tell them they can save some money by forcing their retirees into buying their ‘advantage’ product. Then the big switch is put in motion with minimal notice, deceptive promotional material (it’s “better”, it’s “custom made”, it's a “five star plan”) and it is rammed through before most of the retirees even know what happened to them. In some cases they DON’T know, until they go to the doctor with their Medicare card and are told, “sorry, you’re not on Medicare anymore and we don’t accept that plan”. The salesman/broker makes big money selling the new plan, the big health insurance companies get the retirees’ Medicare premiums, overbill Medicare (140 BILLION a YEAR-yes, that’s BILLION) medicareadvocacy.org/... and skimp on benefits for the retiree. All the middlemen make money and the retiree pays the price, now having to go through a middleman insurance flunky (or just a logarithm) that will determine what treatments they may or may not access and in the end likely paying more than they ever would have paid under traditional Medicare.
While it’s certainly a disgrace that old people who might not know better are duped into trading off their excellent Medicare Health Benefits for “silver sneakers” and cheap gym memberships, it’s an even bigger scandal that our government allows senior citizens to be FORCED off the traditional Medicare that they want to keep and then forced into an inferior for-profit, ‘advantage’ plan and given zero choice about the plan. This abusive practice should be stopped now. The politicians who enable it should be called out.
Maybe once we stop this practice of FORCING retirees off of Medicare, then we can start trying to help those who make the mistake of voluntarily choosing to trade in their real Medicare for a dis-advantage plan.