Medicare Supplement Plan Changes In 2010

By Author: Chris Brines
Total Articles: 4762
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Medicare supplement plans can be invaluable when you reach your senior years. Many people turning 65 see the advantages on offer and choose to take out a Medicare supplement plan to ensure that they are not left with bills to pay when their treatment exceeds the cost of their Medicare plan. Unfortunately, our older years are when we are likely to need more medical care. This is also when most of us have stopped earning and are looking forward to enjoying our retirement. It makes infinite sense to pay this extra insurance premium to make sure that we are not left struggling to cover bills, especially if a husband or wife passes away after a long illness with lots of treatment and the remaining spouse is left to deal with the bills.

Medicare supplement plans are changing in 2010, so you need to make sure that you are aware of what changes are planned and how this affects you. If you are not taking out your plan until after June, you will automatically only be offered the new policies. For those renewing, you will potentially need to change your plan. These changes are designed to make the Medicare supplement policies better ...
... so you shouldn't worry about the changes; just make sure that you understand them and understand the full breakdown of benefits you are entitled to. A letter of the alphabet identifies Medicare plans, and as of the June 1, 2010, the following plans are going to be discontinued. This means you can no longer buy them and customers currently subscribing to them will need to move over to new plans. The plans being discontinued are all Medicare Supplement plans, not standard Medicare plans, and these are E, H, I and J. If you are currently on one of these, you need to start thinking about where you go next.

However, these four discontinued policies will be replaced with the introduction of two new policies, Medicare Supplement plans M and N. Plan F is not being discontinued, as it is currently a popular plan that is well priced so it is likely to remain popular for many years to come. The new plans have an additional benefit which has been missing from all other Medicare supplement plans. It will also be added to existing plans such as F, simply because it is such an important benefit. Hospice benefits were not covered. For many people, this can be an extremely important part of their care, especially when they get too sick to be cared for at home yet do not require the level of medical intervention that justifies them taking a full hospital bed which will be in demand from other seriously ill people. Hospice care is simply invaluable. When you speak to relatives after a loved one has passed away, they have nothing but praise for hospice that made the last weeks or months more comfortable for the patient. Obviously, the care cannot be provided without cost and many people were finding that the benefits in the standard Medicare policies were not enough to cover their treatment. They would get out the Medicare supplement policy only to find that it was not covered on there either, and they were forced to fund this vital care themselves.

It is worth saying again that the changes being made to Medicare supplement policies are not designed to lessen benefits but to improve them; however, it can be an unsettling time if you are being told to change a policy if you do not fully understand the Medicare supplement world in general. This is where you need to take advice. Do not agree to anything until you are 100 percent sure that you understand the coverage that you are considering. You should be totally happy that the benefits offered are going to be what you want them to be in the event that you or your partner falls ill and needs treatment. If you have friends and family who are over 65 and pay a Medicare supplement, perhaps you can offer to help them with these changes when they happen in June. There are lots of places that you can access the information about the changes. If you can get a copy of their existing schedule of benefits, you will be easily able to see which of the two new plans most closely matches their existing coverage and help them make the transition over. It may be that you simply need to prove that they are on the F plan and therefore, do not need to worry about changing plans.
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