I was inspired to send this message by this brazen marketing attempt I got yesterday. You might know that “Medicare Advantage” is neither Medicare nor advantageous for most Medicare-covered citizens. It’s a private, for-profit HMO-style insurance option that has more practitioner and coverage restrictions than Medicare, and costs more.
https://cepr.net/publications/medicare-advantage-myth-busting
https://prospect.org/health/2024-01-12-great-medicare-advantage-marketing-scam
https://www.amazon.com/dp/1523091630?tag=thomhartmann
You may know how much I hate advertising in general, but this hard sell pulls out all the stops. Looking like an official government mailing – they often use green cards – it’s rife with all sorts of misleading claims of cost savings, most of which are contradicted by the nearly unreadable fine print, and even smaller text on the back. And, of course, they point you to a phone number to call for a “free Medicare review”, where you’ll get an even harder sell. And once you go OFF real Medicare onto an “advantage” plan, it’s apparently really hard to go back.
These companies’ multi-billion-dollar profit motive makes them stretch the legality of these mailings and other TV and print ads. Don’t fall for it, do your own research. Until we get Universal Healthcare (won’t happen in THIS administration!), we’ll be bombarded by these sorts of things – not to mention those horrible TV ads for prescription drugs that happen ONLY in the U.S.
Stay healthy!