A slightly older freind of mine just got her medicare card and a bill for Part B, which was like $400 for 3 months.
However, she has full medical thru Kaiser.
She is thinking she doesnt need Part B, but can she opt out now? If so, is it a good idea? She is covered uder her retirement, so she can get Kaiser or whatever for the rest of her life.
She seems to think that since i once worked for the Feds, I know all about this stuff.
What does full coverage through Kaiser mean? Medicare Advantage? Independently covered?
Not medicare. She is covered thru her retirement, and can get insurance thru them forever.
The key question is what the Rx portion of her employer retiree coverage covers.
If that plan is secondary to Medicare Part B then she obviously needs to sign up for a Medicare Part B plan. If it’s not secondary to Medicare Part B, then she will receive, by law, an annual letter from her employer/plan informing her that her coverage either does or does not provide “creditable coverage”. Creditable coverage means coverage which is equivalent to or better than the standard Medicare Part B plan. (Most employer plans provide creditable coverage.)
If her plan provides creditable coverage, then she should probably not pay $133 a month for a Medicare Part B plan. If her plan does not provide creditable coverage, then if she ever needs to sign up with Medicare Part B, she will pay a higher rate than the standard.
Worth being aware that while an employer plan might say it’s “coverage for life”, there’s generally no legal obligation for the employer to follow though on that promise, and it’s not uncommon for employers to just decide to save some money by cutting back, despite having promised this benefit for years. If it’s a union plan, it’s subject to whatever the union is willing to agree to. Generally unions push back hard against this type of benefit cutting, but sometimes there’s some horsetrading going on, and a union might be more willing to stiff the retirees than stiff current employees.
My wife’s retirement contract included health insurance but specifically stated it would be a medicare supplement.
Some policies have what my company calls “Phantom COB”, where if a subscriber is eligible for Medicare but does not take it, the policy will not pay the 80% that Medicare would have paid.
Strike all this. I was thinking of Medicare Part D.
My apologies.
I think this is the usual case. MediCare B pays the first 80% and the retirement coverage pays the 20% that individuals are responsible for paying. Probably similar rules for Parts A and D.
My parents retirement coverage has worked that way for years.
Tell her to look at that ‘bill’ very carefully!
When I got on Medicare, I started to receive bills for about that amount, each month.
I had to look very carefully at them, and the envelope they came in, to determine that they were not actually bills at all. They were some kind of an enrollment, and if I paid them, I would be enrolling myself into some kind of a medical plan. Oh, and they so helpfully offered to automatically deduct the amount from my bank account each month, if only I would send them my bank name & account number and all the details on that.
Looked just like the fake contract-disguised-as-an-invoice that I used to see. Sent by scam companies claiming to be our ISP, or doing office supplies, or whatever. Often these were forwarded to me for payment from people within our organization! They didn’t look too closely at them, and these were formatted good enough to fool people.