Look Before You Leap...Medicare HMO's

HMO's are advertising machines... appealing to the desperate need of the healthcare consumer and preying on the vulnerability of fixed income, financially strapped seniors.... Universal Healh care has a medicare HMO plan advertised as "Any, Any, Any"...advertised that so that it appeals to every senior and apparently claims that they can visit any participating provider and that accepts Medicare. These claims just are not true and physicians are very reluctant to participate with this program.

Last year, Bob Archer, then Pasco-Pinellas coordinator for a program that advises Medicare beneficiaries on insurance options, was so frustrated with Universal's handling of one member's problem that he took the unusual step of reporting the case to the Florida Department of Elder Abuse.
"Universal is light years ahead of everybody in terms of the quantity of complaints," said Archer, who was unable to get Universal executives to return his calls directly. "We seldom get complaints about other Medicare HMOs."

Universal currently needs to ante up additional funds by March 23 2007 or the state will suspend this medicare plan.

If Universal fails to come up with the required reserves, the subsidiary that operates the Any, Any, Any plan will be liquidated and put into receivership by the state sometime next week. State and Medicare officials emphasized that in such an event, members would have the option to move to another private Medicare plan or back to traditional Medicare.

Even without state mandated liquidation, this example speaks to the very cautious nature seniors must approach what appears to be a HMO fix to a broken healthcare system... seniors may go from bad to worse...

so tread carefully if choosing to opt out of a health plan that seems to be working reliably for you or your family members... thoughts?