Medicare value limited

The federal government missed the mark by a mile for the cost of a health plan called Medicare. It is actually Mini-Care when a Medicare annuitant is an inpatient in a hospital and has a life-saving surgery and has not purchased a Medicare supplement.

From recent experience, if the patient had not had a Medicare supplement or a Medicare Advantage Plan (sold by a private insurer that incorporates basic Medicare with coverage that covers the gaps in the 2009 version of Medicare), we would have incurred a mortgage of about $40,000, based on Medicare’s allowances.

This is only $40,000 that would be deducted from their offspring’s inheritance and would actually be more if Medicare reimbursed the hospital involved and the medical professionals anywhere near the maximum allowances allowed by an individual or group health plan.

Any managed care plan (any type) today, with less than a one-visit deductible for illness, invites abuse by the hypochondriac or the medical profession. Any plan should have an accident rider which pays 100 percent upfront and then the deductible is applied. Who has more accidents: a child or a Medicare annuitant from unanticipated falls?

W.F. Thompson

Spokane