subject: A Senior Moment of the Lucid Kind - Pay for Medicare Again? [print this page] A Senior Moment of the Lucid Kind - Pay for Medicare Again?
For as long as he could remember, he'd paid into Medicare. At first, it was included with the social security tax. Later, the Medicare came in a separate listing. He paid for it then, and now that he's retired, he's paying for it again.
Hm-mm? Did it all begin during the Linden Johnson administration? He couldn't remember exactly. Just shows how history transitions with life's little ironies. Johnson made first strides toward racial integration, and now we actually have a black president.
Oh well, it went something like that. He could riffle through his 25 some years of paystubs and tabulate the amount of his social security and Medicare payments. So this is what he did.
That's when another coincidence shows up. The Medicare payments were just about the same figure as what he had paid out in social security taxes.
All of his working career, he felt assured that his Medicare payments would cover his healthcare needs during retirement. He faithfully kept his commercial insurance payments up during his working years, though he was lucky enough to only claim benefits to pay doctor and hospital bills for the birth of his two sons.
Now retired, he will soon be on the roles of Medicare, and he will still be paying into Medicare for the rest of his living days. On top of this, he will need supplementary insurance.
Why couldn't he just keep his private health insurance carrier? They always did right by him. Now he won't be allowed to use the good old Anthem Blue Cross he'd always had.
All in all, he'll be paying for government sponsored health insurance, and already it will be more per month out of his pocket.
In total, Medicare and supplementary insurance is costing about fifty dollars more than what he was paying to his private insurance carrier. It's right at a time when he's making the least he's ever made in his life.
The government took his money for Medicare all during his working years. Now, he's retired and he will be required by law to pay for it all over again.
So, the new task at hand will be finding a doctor who accepts Medicare patients. Then if he finds that doctor, will he be a good one?
In the beginning, government's original purpose was to protect the people. " Who's going to protect the people from the government?" he wondered aloud to himself.
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