Good Expertise with Medicare Benefit overlaying emergency care exterior the USA

CuriousGeorgeTx wrote: ↑Mon Sep 09, 2024 11:14 pm

ResearchMed wrote: ↑Mon Sep 09, 2024 7:19 pm
Does your Medicare Benefit plan have a $50k lifetime cap on international protection? Or another restrict? Many do.

I had not considered that. I appeared on the plan paperwork and did not see any such restrict, however I’ll verify with Aetna and be sure that I did not miss one thing. Thanks for the suggestion

Glad to listen to your declare went so nicely.

Do verify about any attainable restrict.
Not all plans are the identical, so this may increasingly not have an effect on you.
However it’s a state of affairs that’s mentioned typically on CruiseCritic, about preserving the MA protection for occasions when one doesn’t produce other journey insurance coverage.

Additionally, IF this is applicable to you, then additionally double verify that your “different” journey insurance coverage (be it Chubb or different) is “major”, not “secondary”. Secondary signifies that it solely pays if another protection both runs out or denies the declare… in order that would not protect the MA. Main means it is on it is personal, and there is not any have to verify about different protection… even when there’s different protection.

This “secondary” bit can catch some plain vanilla Medicare people who do *not* have an Benefit plan. As a result of many individuals DO have Medicare + Benefit protection, these with Medicare usually nonetheless have to submit the declare to Medicare and watch for the denial earlier than their exterior insurance coverage can pay.
My understanding (which is probably not right, as a result of it isn’t first hand information) is that plain Medicare, w/o an Benefit add-on, covers virtually no international care. There are a couple of exceptions comparable to “if in Canada whereas en route from the 48 states to Alaska and a Canadian ER is nearer” or a couple of different specifics.

A query: We even have Medicare plus a Retiree plan, for retirees and spouses.
However it’s extra like Medicare plus a Medigap kind of complement, reasonably than like a Medicare Benefit plan.
Would possibly that be what you have got?
If that’s the case, there might nicely *not* be any “international protection” cap.
Our Retiree “add on” (apparently it isn’t formally a “Medigap Complement”??) is kind of beneficiant, as was the Worker protection. For instance, meds are included, so we need not take care of a Half D plan or which Half D to decide on yearly (ugh).

We are inclined to get third social gathering journey insurance coverage anyway. There are not any limits or in/out of community points, and many others.
I am undecided what our “common” medical health insurance would pay for abroad care. Would the “customary charges” nonetheless restrict what it might pay? Which may not be an enormous drawback, on condition that care within the USA is usually far dearer than abroad, however nonetheless, would there be any limits? Possibly not for emergency care, however I might reasonably not discover out the exhausting approach.
[The one time we did submit a very modest foreign claim while still employed, it was such a nightmare that we turned to the VP for HR/Benefits. She had the same, er, “difficuties” we had but finally got payment to us.]

Plus in our case, most of our claims have been for important journey prices reasonably than value of medical care. The “medical emergency” often occurred at house earlier than we left or a international hospital refused to simply accept fee (!), or the medical charge wasn’t a lot, comparable to 2 occasions we requested a resort to name a doctor to come back to our room. A type of occasions ended up with a hospitalization, the opposite simply ended up with some meds. That latter time was in Oslo. The doctor arrived carrying a very nice “Norwegian model” sweater (we had simply bought a few these), and he appeared like he had simply stepped off the ski slopes. If the resort hadn’t referred to as him, we might have been a bit suspicious. Nevertheless, he had his little medical bag of tips, and after some examination, he was capable of simply hand us the meds… should be frequent occurrences.

RM