Looking at Your Public Part C Medicare Advantage Health Plan Options in Barnstable County

• Step 1 -- some basic questions about what public and private Medicare insurance you have now
• Step 2 -- entering your drugs
• Step 3 -- choosing a pharmacy, and 
• Step 4 -- deciding whether you will look at Part C or Part D plans (don't choose both)

it's time to choose among the public Part C Medicare Advantage health plans available in Barnstable County.  You will see the options available to you on a screen that begins with a comparison to Original Medicare.

I am a big fan of medicare.gov and the Medicare Plan Finder (it's an exchange just like the other one that's getting all the press these days... except this one works). But the comparison it starts with -- between Original Medicare and the available Part C plans ranked by average "Estimated Annual Health and Drug Costs" -- is not very useful. What Plan Finder is supposedly telling you (in the illustrated example) is that the average Estimated Annual Health and Drug Costs for this theoretical person in zip code 02638 -- whose only drug use is $302 a year worth of Atenolol (entered in Step 2) -- would be $3610 under Original Medicare but only $3080 under a Part C Medicare Advantage health plan from Tufts... if his or her medical costs were average.

The word average is the kicker. No one is average. And the cost estimates are not meaningful. For example, you can get a year's worth of Atenolol at Target or Walmart for $40. The estimated medical costs used by the Plan Finder in the background (you can look them up if you dig deeper by checking the box beside Original Medicare are equally unreliable.

The better comparison is between various Part C plans (see future blog post) and the better way to rank the Part C plans is by monthly premium cost (see Note). 

NOTE: This is not true when looking just at Part D plans. If you use the Plan Finder to find and  compare Part D plans -- because your former employer gives you a private Medicare supplement as a benefit but not complete drug coverage or because you are on an individually purchased private Medigap plan -- then comparing drug costs is a good way to compare.