jreeves
Senior Member
- Feb 12, 2008
- 6,588
- 319
- 48
Well, let me try to answer your question.
$98.00 a month is held out of (both) my husbands and my SS check monthly, a total of almost $200.00 monthly.
We pay AARP an additional $76.00 a month each for our "supplement" insurance. Which keeps our "co-payments" where they are .. (below).
Our normal co-payment for doctor appointments is $10.00 each visit. Regular doctor and specialists, (heart, pulmonoglist, urlogist), that both of us need, not want, but need.
Emergency room and admittance into a hospital runs much more.
Generic medication co-payment runs from $5.00 - $10.00 for a 30 day supply - unless you get it for 90 days which is a little less expensive. Non-Generic medication co-payment runs $25.00 and up depending upon medication. (My Advair, alone, would be over $350.00 a month without it).
Between the two of us we are on several medications, monthly.
Both of us were what I assume you would call .... "Blue Collar Workers - middle class America" ... we worked all of our lives until we retired on Social Security - I retired at 60 on Social Security Disability. No, we did NOT have huge retirement IRA's, etc.
When my husband retired at 65 (from a constuction trade he had worked at since he was 14) we had the option of continuing his "Health Insurance" that he had when he was working. At $1,500.00 a month, (COBRA - is higher), because both of us had pre-exisiting problems, it would be as if we were signing up with them for the very first time. Even though "they" had been paying our medical costs when he was working (and was provided by his employer as part of his salary package) ... no cost to us.
So as I see it ... we have NO choice. But to take what we can get and can get by with, which is what we now do. With Medicare and Supplement insurance.
A lot of people think that "Medicare" is free for Seniors ... it is not. Basic Medicare does not cover medication.
So see folks .... being a Senior Citizen in our Golden Years is not all that it is cracked up to be. And perhaps an insight to where your Social Secirity is being used, by we ole folks. We did not retire from Enron or one of those places.
Hope that answers your question?
So your not thrilled by Medicare is that your point? No seriously I think we should make sure our Seniors today are taken care of, they have no choice. For the rest of us 30 and 40 year olds, our government should no longer lie to us about the impending crisis. There isn't enough money in the trust funds to provide for our retirement. My advice to everyone, make sure you have another source of funds for your retirement other than Social Security. But even more important than that try and secure funds for your medical coverage now. Don't depend on Medicare....