Sandra

I have had Advantage for many years and liked it fine until I got older and was diagnosed with macula degeneration by the optometrist that I’d seen for a long time. He had started me on latanoprost a couple of years before saying, “I’m not sure you have glaucoma, but use this just in case”. Then in December 2019 was when I had gotten new glasses and the prescription was not to my liking. He sent me to the room where they took pictures of my eyes, and thats when he told me I had macula degeneration and started to leave the room when I asked him what he was going to do about the glasses and he said “IT’S NOT THE GLASSES, IT’S YOUR EYES” and left. That was the last time I saw him, because I immediately called my insurance man and told him I wanted to change plans because the Humana plan didn’t have qualified people. He recommended the best retina doctor (M.D.) in the area but I had to change plans to United Health Care, which doesn’t give back any money. In fact in 2022 they deducted $170.10 from my Social Security check which brought my check to less than what I had received in 2019. Everyone was raving about the great 5.9% increase, but they fail to say that they took all of that and more for Plan B. Someone wrote an article about how bad the Medicare Advantage plans are, that they are not Medicare, but with the name Medicare Advantage everyone thinks that it is. With the United Health Care not only do I have to pay much more, but the co-pay is more, and I have to pay 25% of every charge that is made by everyone except my primary care doctor. Dr. Mines takes the plan I have even though it is a HMO-POS, but he only charges my regular $35 co-pay, which is $10 more than Humana. I also found on the last two doctors I saw under Humana, they have a tendency to not want to send you to specialists, and one of them told me they wouldn’t do a colonoscopy on me because of my age, whereas when I changed to United Health care, my new doctor sent me for a colonoscopy, endoscopy, and mammagram that I hadn’t had in years. Humana seems to think that if you’re 80+ you didn’t need to watch for cancer, or anything else. I live on Social Security, so the $54 less this year than last was a blow, especially with the outrageous inflation that the Fed has caused. And speaking of Social Security, the amount we have to spend from Social Security has only increased a very small amount over the past 15 years, and of course with inflation mounting as it is, seniors will probably wind up with nothing to benefit the 1 percenters. I think that the insurance company got the best deal out of this. They are guaranteed customers and pay from the government, that’s how they pay their CEO’s millions and millions in salary not to mention stock deals, and all the other benefits. And besides there’s always a few who can’t resist in cheating on medicare!