Peninsula Daily News Column 1-5-12 "Medicare open enrollment coming"

            You guys are hard-core!

            It’s January 5^th of a new year! We’re surrounded by opportunity and the prospect of Valentine’s Day! You ought to be recovering from the frenzy of the holiday spirit and the vagaries of airline schedules!

            But, Oh NO! Not you guys – YOU want to talk about…Medicare?? OK, while I think your time would be better spent burying last year’s fruit cake in the neighbor’s backyard, I live to serve, so (since you’re asking) Medicare it is.

            Yes, there is another “open enrollment” coming up. Some people, professionals and bureaucracies like to argue about whether or not it should be called an “open enrollment,” because there are two or three other equally obtuse monikers that can be applied, but for most of us who are just trying to navigate this sucker, it’s an “open enrollment.”

            Beginning January 1, 2012, and running through February 14^th (I know – No, I don’t know…Maybe because it’s a day we can remember? Who cares?), we can leave a Medicare Advantage Plan and switch to “original” Medicare. If we do that, we will have through Valentine’s Day to join a Part D plan. Coverages will begin the first day of the month after the Plan(s) gets your form.

            Here’s what you CAN’T do between now and February 14:

1. You can’t switch from Original Medicare to an Advantage Plan;
2. You can’t switch from one Advantage Plan to another Advantage Plan;
3. You can’t switch from one Part D plan to another Part D plan, and…
4. …you can’t switch or drop a Medicare Medical Savings Account Plan.

Another thing you probably can’t do between now and February 14 is go outside and get a tan, but Medicare doesn’t care.

IF you decide to do this, and IF you’d be adding a Medicare Supplement plan to your “back-to-Original-Medicare” New Year’s jaunt, you might want to investigate whether your supplement plan-of-choice will even take you, given your health status, because they don’t have to.

And what, you’ve asked, are these 5-star plans? Well, beginning this month, you can switch to a “5-star” Advantage Plan any time during the year, IF there’s one in your area AND you can only do that once in a calendar year. An Advantage Plan gets a “5-star” rating based on feedback from members, healthcare providers, etc. There are, for now, only two in Washington: Group Health Cooperative and Kaiser Permanente Senior Advantage, so unless you live around one, no help.

And speaking of “no help,” have you wondered what we’d do if our local hospital went away? Probably not, because most of us think of our hospitals like we think about firefighters or law enforcement or 24-hour plumbers – OF COURSE they’re there! They’re ALWAYS there! We count on them!

Yeah, we do; so if, in our frenzy to cut every program that doesn’t cut us first, we keep whacking folks off of things like Basic Health, Maternity Support, Disability Lifeline, Medicaid, etc, what do we suppose happens?

Do we suppose that all those folks stop needing hospitals or healthcare? Probably not. So, what do we suppose that they do? Right, same thing you and I would do: Go to the ER and end up becoming “charity care.”

And do we suppose that our hospitals have an infinite capacity to absorb more and more and more charity care? Probably not. Could a hospital actually have to…close? Yes, or dramatically reduce services or something, because this is America and everything runs on money – Nothing runs on nothing.

So this whole economic “thing” may not be just about the folks who are actually on those programs – It may also be about you and me and Grandma.

Oh, well, as long as I’m on a soapbox, consider this: Hospitals are businesses, right? Patients (customers) come in, services get rendered, hospital gets paid – Rather like a beauty salon; so, if a business (hospital) doesn’t have enough customers, what happens? Right: Same thing that happens to the beauty salon.

Sound fun? No. So, when you hear about shopping and buying “locally” to support our local economies, consider applying that same principle to our local hospitals. Now, certainly, if you need to go somewhere else to get the care you need, then go! – I would! – But if you can get what you need here…Well, “here” is where you live.

But I digress. What this whole column should have been about is what to get 98-year-old Aunt Tillie for next Christmas. Do hospitals sell gift cards?