I’ve been pretty satisfied with mine too, but an interesting thing happened.
My supplement premiums have increased to more than the actual Medicare part B premium.
So for covered expenses, Medicare pays 80% for $175 dollars/month and my supplement carrier pays 20% for $178. (2024 figures)
Something is wrong with this system.
The same thing happened with my supplemental, over a course of about five years. The premiums were increasing by at least 10% each year. I spoke with my agent, who discovered that Aetna no longer sold that particular policy in my state and was undoubtedly trying to shed all of its customers. She (my agent) was able to find a much, much cheaper policy for my wife and me. The underwriting for the new policy was nothing more than a 30-question questionnaire.
You might check back with whoever advised you when you initially purchased your policy.
I actually have an appointment in a week. 
Good!
We lost Hubster’s medigap becaused we missed payment(s)? Underwriting for him is astronomical, so he now has advantage. It’s not great, but it’s better than nothing or 1000.00s of dollars in premiums every month.
I’d like to see traditional Medicare include hearing, dental, and some of the other things advantage covers, but better coverage. I’d like to see medigap policies required to cover all medicare eligible members at a decent price and allow people to shop every year at open enrollment. I would also like to see medigap premiums be auto-drafted out of monthly social security payments. Seriously, advantage policies can do this why not medigap plans. The whole mess is ridiculously convoluted, complicated, and infuriating.
Mine is, for the past nine years.
Well that’s a good start. We couldn’t do that when he first got medigap. I can’t remember when we had to change to advantage; it may well have been over 10 years ago. It would have helped us.
I’m fortunate enough to be in the (shrinking) demographic with a pension, and the premium is deducted from the monthly payment. Also, my last employer foots half the bill.
I don’t think that has ever been an option for me in the seven years that I’ve had supplemental insurance. It may vary from state to state and/or company to company. Do you mind telling us who your insurer is?
BC/BS of Nebraska. I signed up in January of 2015.
Thanks!
I am going to check with my advocate/agent to see if that can be done in the state directly south of you.
You could not do it in MI 10 years or so ago; I asked. I also signed up for a supplementary dental policy a few weeks ago (dropped it as they had a 12 month waiting period for the work I needed.) I couldn’t have that premium deducted.
Similar for me. Not just a pension, but my unused sick hours are used to pay for my supplemental coverage. I had a LOT of unused sick hours.
I do have a SS account online but not at Medicare one. I am perfectly happy to not receive all that useless unasked-for spam that comes in the mail. I was good without it for a year and a half but it appears that marketers have found me. Big sigh.
Agreed. I can provide my own pasta and pizza (that’s the offering we get from the internet/phone companies here). I will look for a gov’t sponsored seminar. I do think it would be good to attend one, if only to hear other people’s thoughts and questions. I’ve been to both the Medicare and SS websites to read what I can there and have a good idea of what I’m looking for.
Thanks everyone.
My father, like you, was employed by the State of Wisconsin. When he retired, as a full professor with the Extension system, he had stockpiled a ton of sick days and unused vacation time, and was able to convert that into something like four years of paid-off Medicare supplemental insurance.
Huh. That’s new one for me. Ours (unused sick leave, but not unused vacation which just gets paid out as a check) gets converted into service extension credits to increase the pension, but no provision for supplementing medical expenses. My medical coverage itself is okayish, but the expense support side of it is kinda threadbare since it hasn’t been updated in ~15 or 20 years and what was once an adequate fixed subsidy is now woefully inadequate.
Better than many get though, so I guess I can’t complain. Much. But maybe a little.
My unused sick time ( in a different state) was used to extend my pension service time and was also converted into a cash value which was then divided by my life expectancy in months to come up with a monthly credit toward my share of my health insurance for the rest of my life. Once I am Medicare eligible , it will function as a Medicare supplement- and reimburse Medicare premiums to myself and my husband.
My father retired (and was able to do that) something like 20 years ago; it’s possible that doing something like that, even within that same retirement/pension system, isn’t possible today.
Factoring in typical inflation, I expect that my unused sick time will last for another 17 or 18 years. I’ve already been using it for 2.
My branch of the state government was getting dinged so badly by out of control use of sick time (we got 5 hours sick time every 2 weeks worked, and it never expired) that they would double your sick time at retirement as an inducement to save it up. And my hourly salary was rather on the high end, so it really added up, dollarwise. But there was no way to convert it to cash or pension increases the way your and Tamerlane’s dad did. For me it’s only usable for medicare supplemental insurance.
We in the unionized airline industry have something like that now. See
The details of how much value is put into a person’s RHRA differ by employer and by job, but the rules / laws for RHRA in general are described in that cite.
For my job category and employer upon retirement they will “deposit” notional money into the RHRA equal to some hefty percentage of our unused sick time multiplied by our final hourly pay rate. In my personal case that came to about $35K.
The upside is I can burn through that money paying my various medicare premiums, dental, etc., insurance premiums, and all the OOP costs just like I would with an FSA or HRA were I still working. And like an HRA (but not an FSA), there’s no use it or lose it feature. It’ll take me many years to use that up. And twice as many now that I’m single again!
The downside is if my employer declares bankruptcy at any time in the future they are permitted to poof all that notional “money” out of existence. And almost certainly will. And my balance isn’t invested or investable and has zero rate of return. Meanwhile, medical cost inflation is eating at how much value that dollar amount will buy each year. Said another way, even if if I don’t choose to use it, my balance is “corrroding” at 5-10% per year as cost of insurance and meds and OOPs keep going up & up.
IIRC there are some features that let you access that money late in life not only for medical or LTC expense, but also just for ordinary living expenses. Kinda like an IRA. I’m sure that, unlike an IRA, your RHRA’s value isn’t inheritable and dies when you do. Which would harm your spouse if you had one.