24 Sep Why Two Zero Premium Medicare Advantage Plans Can Differ by Thousands: A County Level Look at Out-of-Pocket Exposure
By Lara Goulson, licensed independent insurance agent, Goulson Insurance Services, Los Angeles
Medicare Advantage enrollment has crossed half of all Medicare beneficiaries nationally, and the marketing that accompanies it has converged on a single number: the monthly premium. In a large competitive county that number is usually zero, which means it carries almost no information. The figure that actually determines financial exposure in a bad year is a different one. It is published, and almost nobody looks at it. According to CMS (Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services), every Medicare Advantage plan is required to publish an annual in-network out-of-pocket maximum — the figure that defines a member's worst-case financial exposure in a given year — yet this number is rarely the focus of plan marketing or consumer decision-making.
[caption id="attachment_76226" align="aligncenter" width="500"] Photo by Pixabay: https://www.pexels.com/photo/close-up-photo-of-a-stethoscope-40568/[/caption]
Dr. Ben Jerry Gonzales[/caption]
Mr. Itay Shalom[/caption]
[caption id="attachment_76207" align="alignleft" width="113"]
Prof. Ami Citri.jpg[/caption]
Description: How to direct evolution in the lab: e. coli bacteria lacking their major attachment capabilities were incubated with human cells in a petri dish. After infection, the plate was washed repeatedly to remove the floating bacteria, and the few bacteria that were able to attach to the human cells remained in the plate. These few bacteria were collected and grown, then used for another cycle of infection. Four successive cycles of selection generated bacteria with highly efficient attachment ability. Credit: Noam Yedidi, Ilan Rosenshine's lab.[/caption]
