RVer selecting health insurance

wvcampers wrote:
Interesting, getting close to retirement and looks like things are changing fast. Never thought about my insurance not being accepted in other regions.

What we found was that some insurance "travels" better than others. But many things come into play. One of the main concerns we faced was "pre-existing" conditions. My DW has a underlying heart condition that has been completely under control for many years.

As a medicare "person" you can change insurance each fall to a new plan for the following year. I did that going from a Seattle based Medicare Advantage to a BCBS policy one year and back to my ex-employer retiree subsidized policy the following year. We however are reluctant to "mess" with her insurance and get locked out because of pre-existing conditions!

Under ACA this is one of the changes that is truly a big plus.

Under our Group Health Medicare Advantage plan we have a primary care doctor here at home. It would be nice to also have one in Arizona for our winter months. One year they found out that we were in Arizona for several months and sent a letter that we had to be back in Washington State before the end of 6 months and "check" in with them to stay qualified for the policy.

One would think that you retire, go on medicare and do not have to do that much with your coverage, as you are on National Medicare. However it is just the opposite! Lots of research and decisions have to be made.

Many get things like "Sky Med" policies that cost 3-500 dollars a year. These type policies will pay to air lift you back to your primary card area and arrange to get your RV returned etc.

If you are in one of the major RV resorts down South there are usually presentations in your club house for these issues that we all face. We also have a VA rep that comes in and gives very good presentations on VA issues and coverages. Don't blow off these informational presentations.

After 5 years of this I have become a single payer believer! Just give me a single payment for a policy that covers me where ever I am, and provides some emergency coverage for short term travel outside the US. Let us have two primary doctors that have a little history with us, if that is our snowbird life style!

Chris

Interesting, getting close to retirement and looks like things are changing fast. Never thought about my insurance not being accepted in other regions.

1775 wrote:

A question for full-timers, asked because we don't full time and I don't know - can you change your "residence" by just registering your RV in a state that has multi-state health plans under the new set up?

Anyone can change a residence. Some folks might have a winter and summer place or a cabin somewhere, etc.

When you full-time you need to change your domicile. If you sold your house you need to pick another state to claim as your domicile. Two different things. The domicile state is where you register, get your license, vote, have an address (mail forwarding usually), etc. and this is what you'd use as your medical insurance domicile state.

cnehodgdon wrote:
We were able to purchase a plan through the NYS Exchange very similar to current COBRA plan. Biggest difference is the cost: we will be paying less than half of the COBRA cost. I called BCBS to get answers to my questions. Most important questions: are our current physicians on the panel and what happens if we get sick out of state.

All doctors are participating and if we get sick out of state, to use Urgent Care just like we would do after hours, etc now. If need for hospitalization while traveling it will be covered.

I was able to get answers I needed by calling both the state and BCBS and asking. Have I had to wait at times, yes, but questions were answered. There are significant pre-existing conditions that require healthcare so we had to have insurance one way or another.

X2

Not moving from Cobra but a private plan in NYS to BCBS. Premiums will be half of what we have been paying. Copay is less and $0 deductible. All of our doctors are on the plan as are all of our prescriptions. We will save thousands and get a better plan.


A question for full-timers, asked because we don't full time and I don't know - can you change your "residence" by just registering your RV in a state that has multi-state health plans under the new set up?

No offense to the smokers some of my best friends are smokers it's there choice they know I don't think they should smoke but, I don't hassle them about it. That being said it's only fair if you smoke you should pay more. One of my best friends got pneumonia at 28 years old spent 30 days on the hospital and had a bill of 125000 dollars. He was a smoker and 80% of the people under 50 hospitalized for pneumonia are smokers.And, of course family plans will cost more. There are more expenses when you have a family.

Seems like after 5 winters in Arizona and having a Medicare Advantage plan based in Washington State, that for those of us that what to move around, that a GOOD single payer National health plan would solve a lot of our needs for transparent coverage where ever we are located when a need arises!

We had to use urgent care walk ins while in Arizona several times and the paper work got really messed up once, taking almost a year to straighten it out.

If we want to winter in California then we have exchange privileges at Kaiser. But none in Arizona, and we do not want to winter in California!

I switched to Premera Blue Cross for one year and hated being nickel and dime'd all the time.

Chris

A new change.

Unintended consequences...This should help you make a choice that best fits your needs.

For a few the ACA will be a good thing....but for most it is a horror. Hugh deductables and higher cost. Also....what you see now I bet will be different in a year when millions lose employer coverage. Also there are many doctors that will not accept many ACA plans and are dropping medicare because of the rates of pay. This I feel is the start of the end of care as we know it. I hope I am wrong. As for us my wifes employer provides insurance...for now. They had to drop BCBS because of a 35% increase in premium caused by the ACA. There is no free lunch folks.

not sure what is offered, but in order to be accepted everywhere, you need to look for a PPO or EPO plan. These plans don't require a primary care physician and usually do not require referrals for specialists, etc.

We have an EPO plan, which is the less expensive of the two, that only requires we choose only an "in network" physician/facility. The PPO that we had prior to this allowed us to go out of network and pay higher premiums. We changed to the EPO because after eight years we never had a problem in any state finding an "in network" provider...our plan is BCBS.

After spending a LOT of time evaluating my options I discovered that Nevada does not offer a PPO plan that qualifies for a subsidy. (We qualify for a substantial subsidy.) Even the BCBS MultiState HMO does not work out. This is a much longer story because we feel we must have a PPO plan because we have Doctors in various states and we spend little time in NV. The ObamaCare plans in NV cover only NV locations except for emergencies in other states. Of course everything is more complicated than I am portraying here but you don't want to read 5 paragraphs on the details.

Bottom line is I must move my domicile from NV to another state in order to get a PPO plan. Right now Texas looks like a likely candidate. I need more time to evaluate alternative states. Fortunately because changing domiciles is not real hard for us, we can do it. It just that we expect to spend a several hundred hours of work to transfer everything over.