Medical costs

I received a bill today for my portion of the surgery on 30-April of this year. That was the very minor surgery to implant the loop recorder under the skin of my left breast.

The total hospital cost billed for that surgery was $27,637.50. That’s just the hospital charges. The good news? My portion of that more than $27K was $225. That’s all. I love my Medicare Advantage (MA) policy. I heard a lot of negatives about signing up for MA plans. For example, I heard that you might never be able to go back to standard Medicare.

Allow me to say, in response to that: Why would I want to? My Part C MA plan covers everything that standard Medicare covers, plus it includes Part D drug coverage. Any drug for which there is an available generic is $0 out of pocket to me. The same is true of PCP visits. My (required) monthly charge for Medicare covers everything my MA plan offers. Standard Medicare doesn’t include drug coverage. It’s available, but at a considerable extra cost.

I chose to pay an extra $20 a month to get lower deductibles for specialists, knowing that I would be seeing a goodly number of them. For that $20 per month, I reduced my copay for specialists from $40 to $20 per visit. I more than saved the cost of that upgrade for the entire year, in just the first half of this year with the specialists I see.

Not everyone’s experience is the same as mine. I know that. But I went into that decision with eyes wide open. Under standard Medicare, Part D drug coverage would have been over $200 per month.

As a liberal, I am supposed to abhor corporate take-over of Medicare. All I’ll say to that is: Until the Federal government gets their act together and implements Improved Medicare for All, I’m happy with what I have.

BTW: The MA plan I am on? It’s a PPO, meaning I can see out of network doctors at a higher cost. I have only once gone to an out of network facility, and that was that ER visit a couple of months back. And the MA PPO is offered by the hospital network where most of my doctors are employed / associated. It’s convenient because everyone communicates quickly and efficiently.

The journey continues.

Tags: Medical Costs, Medicare, Medicare Advantage, spoonie