By SJ Otto
I turn 65 next January. That is when I can start to benefit from Medicare. Until recently I thought that Medicare just pays for our medical bills when we get old enough to receive it. That’s not what it is at all. Instead it is a convoluted system of insurance companies that we have to choose from. We pay for the insurance, and it isn’t that cheap. I already knew that it only pays for 80 percent of our medical needs. We pay an insurance company for this privilege. Now I have to make all kinds of decisions as to what company I will use? With who will I make plans with? And—what kind of plan will I need?
I turn 65 next January. That is when I can start to benefit from Medicare. Until recently I thought that Medicare just pays for our medical bills when we get old enough to receive it. That’s not what it is at all. Instead it is a convoluted system of insurance companies that we have to choose from. We pay for the insurance, and it isn’t that cheap. I already knew that it only pays for 80 percent of our medical needs. We pay an insurance company for this privilege. Now I have to make all kinds of decisions as to what company I will use? With who will I make plans with? And—what kind of plan will I need?
What bothers me the most is that all of this is made difficult to choose from and confusing, because here in the USA Cuba
Here in the US
I’m trying to imagine who or which plan is best for me. Are there plans where people pay a lot of money for the things they need?—in other words there plans in which we get over charged and we have to avoid accidently choosing those plans? It is a lot like the folks who brag that their computer and equipment are “user friendly.” And I have to wonder if there are sales people out there who are offering us “user hostile computers”—if we really want them. But then who chooses the hostile computers? Who chooses an expensive plan that pays for very little?
As difficult and confusing this process is, I’m surprised anyone chooses a Medicare plan. But they do—apparently all old people eventually choose a Medicare plan. This is what I must do now. I am confused and I get plenty of headaches trying to understand all of this non-sense. Maybe some day our politicians will build up the courage to ditch all the insurance companies and provide us with Medicare for all. If that happens we will have a system as generous as the system they have in Cuba Island , where they supposedly have “no human rights,” they have the right to get medical care when they are sick—regardless to their age or income.