Medicare Is Changing — 4 Important Ways It Might Affect You
Medicare, or “Traditional Medicare,” as many call it, has been going through some growing pains.
Recently Medicare Advantage has greatly overtaken it, by offering a number of services not available through the traditional options.
While Medicare Advantage has allowed many people to get partial coverage for vision, dental, and hearing, it offers coverage with a limited number of participating doctors and hospitals.
Then there’s Medicare Part D, for those who wish to add drug coverage to their package — but that’s a whole different ball of yarn.
Proposed changes that may become law as early as this fall may be set to even out the differences between Advantage and Traditional Medicare options.
Why Now?
Medicare expansions generally poll well, but they are also considered to be quite expensive.
The time might be right to spend the money though, in the interest of citizens as a whole — to see how it might affect you personally, talk to your local insurance provider.
It’s estimated that up to ⅔ of all Medicare recipients have absolutely no dental coverage — so maybe it shouldn’t be a surprise that when they were polled, up to ½ of all recipients hadn’t seen a dentist in the past year.
Up to 15% of Medicare recipients had no teeth at all, according to the 2019 poll from the Kaiser Family Foundation.
This lack of dental care doesn’t just cause problems with teeth — it also leads to other infections, and is frequently a factor in malnutrition.
What Changes?
There are 4 big potential changes, and some are more likely than others.
1.Dental
Providing dental coverage to millions of Americans could provide a massive trickle-down effect of improved overall healthcare.
At the very least it should keep the dentists busy for a few years.
2. Hearing
While this isn’t such a large concern, it’s also one of the less expensive benefits that can be added.
It will certainly benefit seniors more than anyone else, and that’s not really a bad thing.
3. Vision
This can make a huge difference for the people affected, at a moderate cost.
It’s certainly not as expensive as dental care — but it is almost equally important.
4. Lower Eligibility Age
This has been promised recently on the campaign trail, by a number of politicians, and is currently being worked on.
The hospitals seem to be quite opposed from a financial standpoint, but that doesn’t necessarily mean it won’t happen.
Lowering the eligibility age from 65 to 60 for Medicare could make a significant improvement in many senior citizen’s lives.
While all of this is speculation and possibilities at the moment, politicians are moving fast to make it a reality.
What does that mean for you? Well, that depends on whether you rely on Medicare.
For more accurate and up-to-date information about how this may affect you, talk to your local expert insurance providers.
You could suddenly have access to significant medical resources that were out of reach only months ago.
Your grandparents could suddenly start saving large amounts of money on their healthcare.
There could also be some changes to your taxes.
Where things will go, how much they’ll cost, and who will pay for them remains to be seen.
