Hassle-Free Health Coverage: Limitations Under Medicare

Medicare will pay for some of your health care expenses; it by no means pays for them all. There are limits on covered services -- and the program includes both deductibles and coinsurance.

Your doctor often will charge you more for services than Medicare will pay. To fill in these gaps, insurance companies have developed special policies known as Medicare supplement policies.

These policies are profitable. Insurance companies and retiree associations deluge the senior population with ads for Medicare supplement policies. Agents selling Medicare supplements don't always practice the professionalism and ethical conduct they should. Often, the combination of these factors results in poor decision-making with regard to supplemental coverage -- buying too much coverage, or the wrong kind, or none at all.

In addition, more direct marketing abuses have occurred. One coomon scenario: An impresionable older person would end up buying six or seven supplemental policies -- when one is all he or she needs. As a result, Medicare supplemental policies are heavily regulated by the government...and consumers have been assured by law of certain important legal rights.

Keep in mind that, even though agents are by law required to exercise great care in recommending and selling Medicare supplement policies, they are paid by commissions on the policies they sell. They may be motivated to sell you higher cost policies that you may not need.