How Medicare Advantage Plans Affect Your Medicare Supplement Plan

While a lower monthly premium can make Medicare Advantage (MA) plans an attractive option over traditional Medicare, these plans can limit your freedom to choose your own doctor, the care you can receive, and your ability to stay close to home for care.

Medicare Advantage plans may look simple and easy on the surface because they include Medicare Part D while also offering a low monthly premium, but these plans have significant limitations on coverage you can receive and affect the medigap plans you may need.

Medigap Limits

For many traditional Medicare and MA enrollees, Medicare supplement plans, referred to as medigap, can help cover out-of-pocket expenses for hospital and medical bills. For MA enrollees however, medigap plans can become too expensive.

If a Medicare Advantage enrollee switches to traditional Medicare, their medical history and pre-existing conditions would factor into the cost of any medigap coverage they may want to purchase. The added costs may make medigap coverage too expensive and further limit the care they can afford.

Talk to Your Doctor About the Risks of Medicare Advantage

MA is not a substitute for traditional Medicare. MA plans are incentivized to minimize their costs by limiting your health care coverage and denying care whenever possible.

By limiting your ability to purchase medigap coverage to help with medical expenses, MA plans take away your freedom to get the care you need as soon as you need it.

Don’t limit your health care freedom. Talk to your doctor about the drawbacks of Medicare Advantage plans and make sure you have all the facts before deciding about your health care coverage.

Learn more about the limits of Medicare Advantage plans here.