[Magdalen] health care...

[Jim Guthrie]

From: ME Michaud

>I was paying $895.97 per MONTH for Cobra. Yikes!
>$104.90 per month is so much more merciful.

$1501/month last fall == the only way to keep Albert on any plan was COBRA, and 
despite my Medicare for August/Sept/October It took awhile to get Albert covered 
on his own.  And COBRA is a family package, so there wasn;t much I could do 
about it. Memorial Sloan-Kettering was very confused over this, and continues to 
notify the COBRA provider (Aetna) of charges, as well as United. To complicate 
matters, the company health plan  had been with United until June 30, 2014, so 
Aetna was only involved  for four months. And United  then had problems because 
I was already in their system from the former employer plan, so told MSK my 
coverage had ended before realizing that the new coverage was the MediGap.

I should hasten to add that it turned out that Part D would not pay for the 
Lovenox that was prescribed for me after I was hospitalized for PE but on the 
last day of coverage, my pharmacist said I was covered under the COBRA plan, so 
the co-pay was $15 on something that otherwise was $1800/month.

The Medicare Premium is deducted from Social Security; the MediGap is paid 
separately. Part D is also subtracted, though I just received a bill from 
Express Scripts because they didn’t set this up with Medicare last year.

Bottom line on all this -- a am thankful for the coverage, it costs a fraction 
of  what we had before, and the complications are enough to keep a retiree quite 
busy with lots of work.

Cheers,
Jim