Obamacare Realities

[TotallyOz]

I have been excited to see the new plans and while the costs are greatly reduced in NYC where I live, they do not provide overseas coverage for anything but emergencies.

 

In the past Blue Cross / Blue Shield would provide overseas coverage if done through a Blue Cross provider. That does not seem to be the case now.

 

I also looked at California plans and they have also limited overseas coverage.

 

Has anyone spent time with the sites and trying to figure out if they will get coverage while visiting Thailand or other places under the new rules and if the new rules are just allowing these companies to offer less coverage overseas?

 

 

[Bob]

Michael, I spent a fair amount of time earlier this year trying to figure out what coverage I could get over here (similar to the reimbursement deal I had with my BC/BS plan then in place) but the bottom-line was that I concluded that pretty much nothing was available under the new plans (or, more pertinent to me, nothing much was available under any of the Medicare Advantage plans).  Each of the available Medicare Advantage plans have the same feature regarding overseas coverage (which seems to be for emergency care only and then only within the first 60 days of a trip outside the US).  I don't know for sure but, given the fairly identical provisions, I'm guessing the law mandates that particular coverage and the insurance companies are offering nothing more than that.

 

Given I'm over here 9 months a year, I ended up getting some ING coverage for my time in Thailand.  It has big deductibles, doesn't cover pre-existing stuff (no problem for me there), and isn't too expensive.  But, as one gets older, the price of such a plan will go up every year and one could definitely have a big hole in future coverage if a new illness/condition becomes a pre-existing condition in a future policy.

 

Given you're out of the country (I think) many months of every year, seems to me that you need to simply go find a policy that's somewhat similar to the reimbursement deal you had with BC/BS.  And it'd sure as hell be nice if it was guaranteed to be renewable for as long as you want it.....but I'm not sure you're going to find anything like that.  In fact, I'm not sure you're going to find anything that's acceptable that covers you internationally and within the US.

[daddydawg]

Bob, is that ING or IMG?  I have IMG and am curious if there is another vendor entitled, ING.

 

The "pre-existing coverage" can be tricky and very often and loosely applied by insurance companies.....obviously an easy way out of paying.  Ask Michael the next time you see him about the "pre-existing condition game" he experienced.

[Bob]

DD, you're right, it's IMG (sorry, it's just a card in my wallet and I hopefully will never have to use it).  My coverage, I think, has a $2,500.00 annual deductible but that's fine with me as all I want is coverage for something really big (and it's much cheaper with a higher deductible).

[TotallyOz]

Given you're out of the country (I think) many months of every year, seems to me that you need to simply go find a policy that's somewhat similar to the reimbursement deal you had with BC/BS.

For now, it would work just fine but I do plan on retiring to LOS one day and much prefer to just keep the same policy. I did think this new plan would make this easier for me but it has had the opposite effect.