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We're looking at moving my dad into my wifes now soon to be empty house. This is an expansion on the "son with a spare room" approach to the enhanced "son with a spare house".
Problem is, he has a medicare HMO where he is, where for $65 a month all the medicare gaps are covered. Essentially with a small co-pay per visit and a small deductible for hospital stays, he's covered end to end.
Healthy as a horse so far, a little high blood pressure thats being treated with minor doses of one of the prescription drugs that would cost him about $30 a month if he wasnt covered.
Problem is, the wifes house is JUST outside the range of the HMO's coverage area. But they may be setting up a new hospital about 20 miles closer in a year or two. Whether they'll "cover" the zip then is still in question though, as its a "low income" area. Which is how insurance companies weed out having to cover less healthy poor people and minorities...they simply dont cover the areas such people tend to live in.
Other options look pretty lousy. I quickly checked some medigap and other stuff...looks like theres a bunch of things and they keep changing...medicare+choice, medicare advantage, medicare this medicare that. Like all health insurance the coverage and costs from one plan to the next change at least 5-6 items so you simply cant compare apples to apples and make a non-confused informed choice. But what I could find was medigap plans that appear to cover almost everything, but the costs shoot up to 200-300 a month!
My granddad got eaten alive by having no medigap policy and then getting quite ill in his late 80's. So while my dad is in good health, he's not going to make that leap.
So for those who have made it to medicare and probably researched the heck out of this already, whats the best and most cost effective support plan for medicare? Ideally almost everything is covered, the cost is decent, and the paperwork is minimal. Especially if the folks in northern cal can comment...he's going to be in yuba county in marysville, but kaiser and the other hmo's appear to not cover there.
The good news is he'd be able to go to my wifes hospital and get only the "good" doctors and taj mahal treatment if he ever did get sick. And he'd be <15 minutes away instead of 45.
Problem is, he has a medicare HMO where he is, where for $65 a month all the medicare gaps are covered. Essentially with a small co-pay per visit and a small deductible for hospital stays, he's covered end to end.
Healthy as a horse so far, a little high blood pressure thats being treated with minor doses of one of the prescription drugs that would cost him about $30 a month if he wasnt covered.
Problem is, the wifes house is JUST outside the range of the HMO's coverage area. But they may be setting up a new hospital about 20 miles closer in a year or two. Whether they'll "cover" the zip then is still in question though, as its a "low income" area. Which is how insurance companies weed out having to cover less healthy poor people and minorities...they simply dont cover the areas such people tend to live in.
Other options look pretty lousy. I quickly checked some medigap and other stuff...looks like theres a bunch of things and they keep changing...medicare+choice, medicare advantage, medicare this medicare that. Like all health insurance the coverage and costs from one plan to the next change at least 5-6 items so you simply cant compare apples to apples and make a non-confused informed choice. But what I could find was medigap plans that appear to cover almost everything, but the costs shoot up to 200-300 a month!
My granddad got eaten alive by having no medigap policy and then getting quite ill in his late 80's. So while my dad is in good health, he's not going to make that leap.
So for those who have made it to medicare and probably researched the heck out of this already, whats the best and most cost effective support plan for medicare? Ideally almost everything is covered, the cost is decent, and the paperwork is minimal. Especially if the folks in northern cal can comment...he's going to be in yuba county in marysville, but kaiser and the other hmo's appear to not cover there.
The good news is he'd be able to go to my wifes hospital and get only the "good" doctors and taj mahal treatment if he ever did get sick. And he'd be <15 minutes away instead of 45.