On January 31, 2022, I found an article that is important to all seniors on Medicare. It was written by James Martin and Saul Anuzis and originally published on January 4, 2022. You can find it at this link:
https://www.60plus.org/raiding-medicare-wont-produce-postal-reform/
The United States Postal Service needs to balance its books. So, the Postal Service Reform Act was introduced to shift retired employees and future retirees of the postal service from the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program (FEHBP) to Medicare. This would help the postal service to balance its books but it would shift millions of postal worker retirees into the Medicare system. It would reduce costs for the postal service but increase costs enormously on the Medicare system.
The “baby boomer” generation is still entering the Social Security and Medicare systems. Adding millions of postal retirees to the Medicare system drains funds in the Medicare system rather than the postal system’s FEHBP program. It does not solve any financial problem. But it adds more financial problem to the Medicare system.
Robbing Medicare to pay for something else is an old trick. In the past, the Affordable Care Act (also known as Obamacare) reduced funding for Medicare benefits by over $716 billion in order to fund Obamacare. Don’t believe me? Check the two-year study of Obamacare that was published by the Congressional Budget Office in July 2012.
In order to offset the financial loss to Medicare caused by Obamacare, the federal government started pushing to promote Medicare Advantage. That costs the federal government less because of all the co-pays, deductions, exclusions, and out-of-network charges which shift health care costs back onto seniors.
Without consulting our agency, one of our clients on Medicare with a Medicare supplement switched to a Medicare Advantage plan. Then, he went into a hospital. He left the hospital with a bill of over $6,000. He asked me to check the bill and see if I could help him. In the past, I had helped the client to correct errors on a medical bill when he had a Medicare supplement through our agency. I helped him save money then. Sadly, I told him that I could not help him because he switched from the Medicare system to the Medicare Advantage system. The two systems have completely different rules. He was stuck with the $6,000 plus bill that he got with his Medicare Advantage plan.
Note: Woodrow Wilcox is the senior medical bill case worker at Senior Care Insurance Services in Merrillville, Indiana. He has saved clients of that firm over two million dollars by fighting mistakes and fraud in the Medicare system. Also, Wilcox wrote the book SOLVING MEDICARE PROBLEM$ which is available through book stores an online.
