Medicare Coverage (continued Part 2)

Medicare gap (also called Medicare Supplement Insurance)

"Visit any doctor, any hospital, anytime, and anywhere without getting permission from the insurance company"

Consider these facts in deciding if Medicare Supplement insurance for hospital and medical coverage is right for you:

• Medicare does not cover all health care bills.


• Medicare has deductibles, co-payments, and co-insurance for some services.


• The insured is responsible for paying the costs of services not covered by Medicare.

You can buy a Medigap plan from a private insurance companies that's designed to help pay your out-of-pocket costs (the gaps in Part A & B coverage). Each medigap policy only covers one person, so if you and your spouse both want coverage, you each must buy separate policy.

Each standardized medigap policy, however, must offer the same basic benefits, no matter which insurance company sells it. Premiums will vary depending on the plan you choose and the comapny you buy it from, but usually the only difference among Medigap policies sold by different insurance companies is the cost.

The best time to buy a medigap policy is during your "Medigap open-enrollment period" In all states, there is an open enrollement period that lasts for six (06) months and it begins on the first day of the month in which you are both age 65 or older and enrolled in Part B (some states have additional open enrollement periods). For more information about buying a Medigap policy, call your State Health Insurance Assistance Program.

All Medigap policies must follow federal and state laws that are designed to protect consumers and every Medigap policy must be clearly identified as "Medicare Supplement Insurance". Furthermore, Medigap Insurance companies can only sell you a "standardized" Medigap policy. There are 12 such policies identified by letters (A to L).

Note that there are numerous changes for the policies sold in 2010. For the first time, Standardized plans have beeen revamped in most 20 years. Please check back to this blog for the updated information anf free quotes for the plan fits you best.

Medicare Coverage (continued)

Medicare Part C: Medicare Advantage Plans

Formerly known as Medicare+Choice, Medicare Advantage plans are alternatives to the original Medicare plan and are notthe same as "suplemental insurance". Sometimes called Part C or "MA plans", these plans are run by private companies and are part of the medicare program. For many people, Medicare Advantage plans are a good value because they can offer health benefits at low or no additional monthly plan premium beyond the Medicare Part B.

Basically, Medicare pays an amount of money for your health care into these private medicare Advantage plans every month. In return, these plans must provide all of your Part A and Part B benefits, and they must cover at least all of the medically necessary services that the original Medicare plan provides.

MA plans can change different co-payments, co-insurance and deductibles for their services and generally have set provider networks. This means you will likely be limited to seeing those doctors (Primary Care Physician - PCP) who belong to the plan, going to certain hospitals for covered services and getting referrals to see Specialists. If you use providers who aren't in the netwaork, you may have to pay the entire cost of the services rendered. However, MA plans can offer extra benefits, such as vision, hearing, dental, and health and wellness programs. Most include medicare Part D, prescription drug coverage (usually for an extra cost).

Mmedicare Advantage plans come in several forms: HMOs, PPOs and SNP - are often referred to as " coodinated care" plans.These plans are build on the ideas of doctors and hospitals working together to coordinate and faclitate your care. Each plan create its own network.

1. HMO (Health Maintenance Organizations) plans - Your PCP may oversee your care and, in some cases, refer you to specialists as necessary.
2. PPO (Preferred Provider Organizations) plans - generally provide more flexibility to let you choose your doctors and hospitals. These plans typically don't require you to have a referral to se specialist, and you can see doctors outside the network without having to pay the entire cost yourself. If you do visit a doctor or hospital outside the network, though, you'll usually pay a larger share of the cost of your care.
3. SNP (Special Needs Plans) offer individual attention for people with complex health needs. These plans are designed to serve people with special needs like those living in nursing homes, those with chronic conditions such as Diabetes, COPD, CVD , Arthritis, Dementia - those who qualify for both Medicare and Medicaid.
4. PFFS( Private Fee-For-Services) Plans - will allow you go to any doctor if the doctor agrees to accept the plan's term of payment before treating you. It's important to confirm the doctor's agreement. Otherwise, you may have to pay up the full amount of the cost of your care.

It's very important to call any plan before joining to find out what your services will cost and to make sure that a plan will meet your needs. To enroll in medicare Advantage plan, send to me your contact info, I will send to you the application or simply get you enrolled by telephone or online. Be aware that there are limitations as to when you can join, switch or drop a MA plan.

Remember, when you join a Medicare, you will have to provide your medicare Number from your Medicare card and the date your Part A and Part B coverage started. You will also generally still pay the monthly Part B premium along with MA plan's premium (if any). That include coverage for Part A and Part B benefits, prescription drug coverage (Part D, if offered) and any other extra benefits.

Remember

Medicare Coverage

For most Americans, Medicare is on the distance horizon. But as you approach retirement age, knowing about medicare and what it can or cannot do for you could be very important to you physical and financial well-being.

You will be automatically enrolled in the program if you're already collecting Social Security or receiving benefits from the Railroad Retirement Board when you turn 65 - or if you 'vs beeen collecting disability for more than two years. But if you're working and not collecting government pension benefits, you need to sign up three months before your 65th birthday.

Medicare program isn't exactly "free" government-sponsored health care. You'll have to pay dedectibles and copayments out-of-pocket, and certain services aren't covered at all.

What you'll ultimately pay for your future medical care will depend on the type of Medicare plan you choose, whether you'll have additonal health insurance coverage from a former employer or you've puchased "supplemental coverage", and how often you make use of the medicare services offered by your doctors or hospitals.


Medicare ABC's

You have several options, and they're not cut-and-dry. Here's what you need to know to make inteliigent decisions about your insurance coverages. Let's start with the basics. You can choose between two (02) ways of receiving your Medicare benefits:

1. The Original Medicare (Part A & B) with options for additional insurance such as Part D and Medicare Supplemental insurance (Medigap)


2. Medicare Advantage Plans (Part C) that combines your benefits.

The Original Medicare Plan : Part A & B

The original medicare plan is designed to help pay for certain medical services and supplies providedin hospitals, doctors' offices and other health care settings. All citizens and legal residents of the United States who have paid Medicare payroll taxes for a minimum of 10 years will be eligible for Part A and Part B coverage upon reaching age 65.

You usually don't pay a monthly premium for Part A coverage if you (or your spouse) paid medicare taxes while working at least 40 calendar quarters. But if you aren't eligible for premium -free Part A coverage - meaning you have worked fewer than 40 calendar quarters - you may be able to buy Part A coverage if you meet a certain conditions.

Those enrolled in Part B have to pay a monthly Part B premium and an annual deductible. Most plan participants will pay the standard monthly premium amount, which is $96.40 in 2009 (normally deducted from your monthly Social Security checks). The monthly premium amount, however, will be higher for people above certain income thresholds. Financial hardship cases can get this premium covered with governmental help.

• Part A - basically helps people better absorb the costs associated with inpatient care in hospitals (including inpatient rehabilitation facilities) inpatient stays ina skilled nursing facility (but not custodial or long-term care), inpatient mental health in a psychiatric hospital (limited to 190 days ina lifetime), as well as hospice are services and home health care services. Some of the costs associated with these services and procedures will be covered completely by Medicare Part A. Others will required out-of-pocket co-payments or the satisfaction of annual deductibles.

• Part B - coverage helps pay for "medically necessary" services such as doctor's services, outpatient care and other medical services not covered by Part A. Part B also helps pay for some preventive care services that are designed to prevent or detect illness at an early stage, when treatment is likely to work best. Part B has its own separate annual deductible-$135.00 for 2009 - as well as its own co-payment and co-insutrance costs. General speaking, Medicare will pay about 80% of the expenses for part B-covered services and supplies.

"You need to be aware of that fact that you will spend money out-of-pocket, either for the cost sharing un der medicare, or for the cost of supplemental insurance if you don't have that through an employer or if your income isn't low enough to qualify for additional assistance through Medicaid (Medical in California). And it's important to remember that Medicare doesn't have any annual out-of-pocket limits."

• Medicare Part D: Prescription Drug Benefit - Medicare offers prescription drug coverage for everyone with Medicare under Part D. But to get Medicare drug coverage, you must take the initiative and join a medicare drug program. Medicare drug plans are run by insurance companies and other private companies approved by medicare. Each plan varies in cost and drug covered. Even if you don't take a lot of prescription drug now, you should still consider joining a medicare drug plan because , if you decide not to join such a plan when you are first eligible, you will pay a late-enrollment penalty if choose to join later. The penalty is one percent (1%) of the monthly premium for each month you don't enroll and it's applied to all future month premiums. There are 2 ways to get Medicare Part D coverage:

1) Stand-alone Mdicare Part D Plan: Enrolling these plans, sometimes called PDPs, add drug coverage to the original Medicare plan and to some medicare Private Fee-For-Service (PFFS) plans.

2) Join Medicare Advantage Plan (such as an HMO, PPO, or SNP). Through these you will get all your medicare coverage (part A & B), including Part D. These plans are sometimes called "MA-PD" and you will usually pay a separate monthly premium (if any) in addition to your Part B premium.

Allianz Fixed Index Annuities

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Call me and I 'll tellyou all about it.

Global Health Insurance Solutions

A Complete Portfolio of Travel and Int'l Health Insurance

For leisure or business? Relax! Your solution is HTH Worldwide 's healthplan(s) which provides you with international medical services featuring unsurpassed access to a carefully selected community of top-flight hospitals, doctors, and behavioral health professionals.

Coverages can be Longer term for:

- Global Citizen with annual renewable plan for episodes of international living. This is designed for US Citizens living abroad at least part of the year, or foreign nationals living in US.

- Global Citizen EXP with all the features of Global Citizen but without US coverage. This plan is ideal for seniors covered under Medicare or individuals covered by a domestic health plan.

- Global Student Health with a renewable feature as long as you are engageed in full-time study. This plan is fit for US stuent abroad and foreign students in the US.

Shorter Term Policies include:

- TravelGap Single Trip designed to cover you when traveling abroad.

- TravelGap Multi Trip - annual plan for international and domestic trips, unlimited up to 70 days per trip.

- Trip Protector - comprehensive travel plan to protect your vacation investment, featuring:

* Trip cacellation/interruption benefits including financial default for all travel suppliers.

* Up to $250,000 in medical protection and $1,000,000 medical evacuation.

HTH Worldwide provides all the tools for your need to manage health risks, including finding the most qualified doctor and clearly communicating your medical condition.

Explore yourself the solutions and benefits as well as the protection your health while traveling by linking the following Website:

http://www.hthtravelinsurance.com/prdCobrand/index.cfm?link_id=28223&header=y&personalized=y

Have a wonderful trip!

New Approach to Long Term Care Insurance

The Growing Cost of Long Term Care

Under the traditional LTC insurance, you pay an annual premium for an insurance policy that will pay your nursing care in the future. It's hard for so many people finding being tough to shell out a LTC insurance policy that they may never use. But the costs keep rising (they can be more than $70,000.00 per year) - so you need to take a hard look at your finances to see if they could sustain such a devastating blow. After all, you insure your car and your home, so why not your well-being?

Introducing a Solution

Now there's a solution that allows you to buy LTC coverage and have the comfort of knowing that your premium dollars will not be wasted if the coverage is not used. This new product combines the best features of life insurance and long-term care into one designed package; it is typically sold as a universal life contract that requires a single premium and that funds an accidental death benefits rider to pay out long-term care benefits if needed.

A single premium payment into this Universal Life product combines three features in one product -

Combo LTC/Life Policy:

1. Tax-Deferred Cash Accumulation Account - Asset protection

2. Life Insurance with An Income Tax-Free Death Benefit

3. Income Tax-Free Long-Term Care Benefit

Once the premium is inside the Universal Life (UL) insurance policy, the account value earns an interest rate (typical at least 4%) on tax-deferred basis, building up a cash value reserve that can be used tax free to cover nursing or home care costs.Any money that is not spent on nursing care benefits will be distributed to yours heirs as an income tax-free death benefit under Internal Revenue Code Section 101(a)(1).

Funding the Plan

This type of LTC/Life plan typically requires a one-time lump sum deposit amount rather than the traditional monthly or systematic premium payments. Therefore, you're entering into an asset transfer process that will require you to uncover "lazy asset" to invest in the policy. Common assets considered for investment include ban certificate of deposit (CD), savings accounts and other fixed-income investments. You might also find a variety of previously issued permanent life insurance policies with cash value that you can combine and use as the initial transfer into the LTC/Life contract.

As with all life insurance, medical underwriting is required for those applying for a policy. As the Insured, you can simplify this process in one of two ways:

- You can structure the policy as a Modified Endowment Contract (MEC) to reduce the amount of pure risk

in the contract.

- You can also do a joint life underwriting, where typically only one of the spouses has to be reasonably healthy for the policy to pass through underwriting.

Conclusion

By including an LTC/Life plan in your retirement portfolio, you gain the opportunity to leverage a lump sum of your retirement savings for multiple benefits on both generational wealth transfer and long-term care protection on a tax-favored basis. If you decide not to obtain an LTC and choose to "self-insure" instead, you need to set aside a significant amount of money to cover all the risk.

This new type of LTC/Life policy helps you to avoid the frustration of paying premiums for a long-term care policy that might never be used. It also work as an effective estate planning tool that allows you to remove the premium from your taxable estate or to have the policy owned by your adult children, thus also allowing the death benefit to be removed from your estate.

Long Term Care Insurance from John Hancock

Are you Half-Your-Life old?

If you are:

- What have you learned in your First-Half?

- Have you been healthy in your First-Half?

- Have you been happy in your First-Half?

- Have you attained financial freedom in your First-Half?

Then what more do you want to learn in your Second-Half?

- Do you want to be healthier, happier, wealthier,and more independent in your Second-Half?

- Do you want to protect what you have achieved in your First-Haff?

Look at yourself in the mirror. Do you like what you see? If not, do something about it today!

Eliminate obstacles. Find solutions. Search for your Options. Regconize that there are Options.

Today is your First day of your Second-Half of your Life. Plan your future with CARE.

Hint No.1 - Long Term Care Insurance from John Hancock

There are several important reasons for purchasing Long Term Care Insurance (LTCI):

- Peace in Mind: Reduce the uncertainty. You can exchange a small, affordable, and certain expense for the possibility of a large uncertain expense that could be financially devastating in the future.

- Flexibility and freedom of choice: If you use the Medi-Cal system to fund your TLC expensees, the State will make all the importance decisions for you. You get no choice.

Purchasing a Custom Care Partnership policy gives you many advantages. If you ever need long term care services, you can rest assured that you have a policy with comprehensive benefits that covers many types of care - whether it's in your home, a residential care facility, or, if required, a nursing facility.

- Independence: Most people are proud of being independent, both physically and financially and do not want to have to rely on their family, friends or State when the need of care arises.

- Asset Protection: Many Seniors have amassed considerbale wealth in the form of cash, home equity, bonds, IRA's, cash value in life insurance, etc... They would much rather pass this along to their heirs than to see it all spent down on LTC expenses, and then, once their assets were gone, to find themselve dependent on others or on the State.

With Custom Care Partnership from John Hancock, the policy provides additional security to prevent hardship by protect your assets up to the amount of benefits received.

Bottom line is that You want the freedom to live your life to its fullest, with dignity and independence while having powers to protect your achievements in your First-Half.

Please give your comments on the issue or send to me an email for further discussions (and more hints).