(C) Daily Kos This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . Medicare "Advantage" STILL trying to FORCE Retirees into their Inferior "advantage" programs [1] ['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.'] Date: 2024-06-21 There have been quite a few articles written with regard to retirees who find themselves worse off after having been duped into trading in their traditional Medicare for “advantage” programs which end up denying care. But there is inadequate public knowledge about the quiet and surreptitious way in which the big ‘advantage’ insurers are teaming up with former employers and unions to dis-enroll retirees from Medicare and to FORCE them into inferior ‘advantage’ plans against their will. The above banner represents a new coalition of New York State retirees banding together against this abusive practice directed towards vulnerable retiree senior citizens and this coalition is growing. Most people think that they can never be forced out of Medicare and into an advantage program, but that is unfortunately not true. Due to a law slipped in during Bush II’s reign, www.commondreams.org/... former municipal employers all over the country have been quietly forcing retirees out of Medicare and into sub-par advantage plans. In many cases it happens before the retirees even know it’s a done deal. In a few more recent cases, retirees have awakened to this theft of their benefits and fought and are continuing to fight this naked money grab by the big health insurance companies. New York City retirees have spent millions fighting the takeover in Court against the City and Aetna and continue to litigate it in the Appellate Courts. No former municipal retiree is safe from this, whether your former employer was big or small. Thus, you have hundreds of thousands of NYC retirees having to fund millions of dollars of litigation out of their own pocket to keep their earned Medicare benefits, all the way down to a couple hundred retirees in tiny upstate NY Cortland County having to go to Court against the County and United Health Care to keep their Medicare benefits. Delaware state employees also had to go to court against their former employers and the insurance companies who were filing amicus briefs against the retirees —just to keep their Federal Medicare benefits that they worked and paid for all their lives from being sold off to a big private insurance company to make a profit. The advantage companies want it all, they will come after your benefits whether you are only a group of a few hundred or a few hundred thousand. More people are waking up to the disadvantages of “advantage’ so to replenish that customer base, they are using the Bush era law to FORCE you to become their unwilling customer. This abusive practice needs to end. Congress could stop it, but of course they haven’t, although there are pending bills to do so that go nowhere. No one should be FORCED into an ‘advantage’ program against their will . Maybe some prefer to choose an advantage program, but that should only happen of their own free choice, not because their former employer teams up with some insurance salesmen to sell out their earned Medicare benefits. [END] --- [1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2024/6/21/2247845/-Medicare-Advantage-STILL-trying-to-FORCE-Retirees-into-their-Inferior-advantage-programs?pm_campaign=front_page&pm_source=latest_community&pm_medium=web Published and (C) by Daily Kos Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified. via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds: gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/