Stocks A to Z / Stocks B / Berkshire Hathaway (BRK.A)
No. of Recommendations: 10
No. of Recommendations: 4
The G plan isn't available anymore, is it?
Glad you seem to be getting on so well. I don't know how I would react, and hope to never find out. I'd like to think I'd be tough, but who knows.
I, for one, will never do a Medicare Advantage plan. From all my years on the TMF Retire Early board, plus this, and reading your website, I know to steer well clear of those things.
No. of Recommendations: 4
Glad to hear you are dealing with this in stride, so to speak. I've been dealing with knee issues which look likely to result in hopefully just minor surgery. Even after two weeks on crutches, (just a cane now,) I can't begin to wrap my head around the adjustments you have had to make. It is abundantly clear that our wonderful rural escape, which we access via a long steep flight of steps, is not a long term primary residence for those in the last half of their life, and will likely become an AirBnB. Scooting up the outside stairs on your butt is fine in good weather, but a bit limiting in rain/snow.
I have been extraordinarily healthy in my 6+ decades. This is a bit of an epiphany that I am not 18 anymore and really need to prepare for that fact.
I hope that 2026 is a good one for you.
IP
No. of Recommendations: 6
I have been extraordinarily healthy in my 6+ decades. This is a bit of an epiphany that I am not 18 anymore and really need to prepare for that fact.
People usually kick the can down the road on things until they have to make a change. We often watch shows and see these retired couples buying homes that just don't seem practical for people in retirement. I've never been fond of houses with steps, maybe because my parents home seemed to have steps everywhere and my first home was a 3 story townhouse and doing laundry was a real pain. Fortunately, while I think our current home is too large, at least there are no steps in or outside the house and most of the hallways are fairly wide.
Once you get older and have health issues it is rare to get back to pre-issue health unlike when you are in your 20s/30s/40s. My back has not been the same since 2018. It is just a matter of whether it is a somewhat mild annoyance or flares up to something more painful and difficult to deal with.
People tend to think if their parents lived to a certain age w/o major issues, they will do so as well but genetics only go so far and many of the older generations lived a much more active/rugged lifestyle and stayed in much better shape unlike the sedentary life many of us live now.
Some people handle aging and the various issues that go along with it fairly well and others don't. I think I will likely be in the second group since asking for help isn't something I do and at times you have to.
Good luck and hope everyone has good or better health in 2026. My medical appointments start up in March.
Rich
No. of Recommendations: 2
I, for one, will never do a Medicare Advantage plan. From all my years on the TMF Retire Early board, plus this, and reading your website, I know to steer well clear of those things.
Do not be hasty about following the advice of someone who is in unusual circumstances. Like, for example, someone who hit a jackpot and retired rich on their mid 30's, with no wife or kids. Their circumstance is very different from the vast majority of people.
Our Humana Advantage plan was originally $75/mo with $75/qtr benefit for for OTC items.
Over the years the monthly premium has changed and now is $45/mo.
We had two major health issues requiring long hospital stays, including ER and ICU. The hospital bills totaled some $300,000 - $400,000.
For this we paid $150/day for the first 3 days and $0 for the next up to 57 days.
No Part A deductible, the Humana Advantage plan over-rode this.
No. of Recommendations: 8
I'm not basing it on "someone who is in unusual circumstances". I'm basing it on years of reading on the old TMF boards, and independent articles, and -most recently- this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ejoi9yfLVCc&t=3s(John Oliver deep dive)
Medicare Advantage is a trap. And once you fall in, it almost impossible to get out because of the rules around Medicare.
If you're reasonably healthy, it's not bad. Seems cheap. If you have serious problems, you will probably have serious issues with Advantage. You're basically inserting an insurance company between you and Medicare. You only need Medicare, and a Medigap policy.
No. of Recommendations: 2
If you have serious problems, you will probably have serious issues with Advantage.
We've had 4 serious problems, with hospital stays (including ICU) for about 10 + 4 + 14 + 14 days over the years.
No issues AT ALL with Humana Medicare Advantage. Who knows, maybe we found the one company & plan that is great while all the others are terrible?
My employer before retirement reimburses $1000 a year if we chose a plan that their health insurance partner agency recommends.
No. of Recommendations: 14
Do not be hasty about following the advice of someone who is in unusual circumstances. Like, for example, someone who hit a jackpot and retired rich on their mid 30's, with no wife or kids. Their circumstance is very different from the vast majority of people.
<scratches head> does that have to do with Medicare Advantage? I intend to follow the advice of my PCP who strongly recommends avoiding Medicare Advantage. It might work fine most of the time but the downsides are enormous. If it works for you, more power to ya (sincerely) but once I get past 65 I won't want to take health risks like that.
No. of Recommendations: 13
<< Who knows, maybe we found the one company & plan that is great while all the others are terrible? >>
I'm going to be somewhat vague in my post because it involves a
software company that I recently sold. I was a principal and the CTO.
We were an early adopter with Medicare Advantage plans on behalf of
our geriatric patient populations, which were split between traditional
Medicare and many of the major Medicare Advantage companies, including
Humana. Because our providers were early adopters, we negotiated
favorable rates. Our initial experiences were mostly positive.
There was a lot of variability between each of these companies
on what medical services they would cover, what documentation they would
require, and their timeliness of responses for approval. Moreover, even
if we would receive approval one month, those same conditions might
be denied a month later.
If there was an overall trend, it would be that we could see everything
shifting to providing less medical care -- even if there was not outright
denial of care -- just by inserting delays into the process. We found
ourselves in a bit of an informational "arms race", updating our software
rules specific to each insurer and their ever-evolving timelines. (*)
Denials would often contradict clinical judgment and require complex
appeals to overturn, so our software had to be calibrated to anticipate
these situations.
As Charlie Munger would have advised, look at the incentives. Many of our
patients were directly marketed by people working for the Medicare
Advantage companies. These people can usually only switch back to traditional
Medicare during the open enrollment period (October 15 - December 7.) They
are often at an informational disadvantage when making this decision.
In summary I'm not going to make a blanket statement about Medicare Advantage,
but my multi-year experience with lots data points would be that I would
probably default to traditional Medicare if I still lived in the US. There
are perverse incentives in the process that I don't see likely to be resolved.
-Rubic
(*) As a computer nerd, I actually enjoyed these challenges.
No. of Recommendations: 2
Many of our patients were directly marketed by people working for the Medicare
Advantage companies. These people can usually only switch back to traditional
Medicare during the open enrollment period (October 15 - December 7.)
And, if the seminar I attended was accurate, you can be subject to rerating if you stay on Advantage for more than a year. No generic Medicare pricing, with cost of Medicare possibly going up based on health. That was not a problem if you started with Medicare or switched within or possibly at the end of the first year. That was enough for us.
While we did hear the above from multiple sources, we did not run it down further. No one telling us this information was selling us a policy, and had no apparent financial incentive to steer us away from Advantage plans. One wanted to be our financial advisor, which we also declined.
IP
No. of Recommendations: 5
{{ In summary I'm not going to make a blanket statement about Medicare Advantage,
but my multi-year experience with lots data points would be that I would
probably default to traditional Medicare if I still lived in the US.
There
are perverse incentives in the process that I don't see likely to be resolved. }}
I'll say. Here's the analysis I did 5 years ago when I turned age 65 and started Medicare.
https://retireearlyhomepage.com/medicare2020.htmlOne very telling insight I got from an analyst at the State Insurance Commissioner's office was invaluable.
I called to ask about the number of customer complaints for the various Medigap insurers in my state to better inform my choice of insurer. The analyst told me that they get very few complaints on Medigap because there is almost nothing a Medigap insurer can do to cause you to complain. CMS does all the benefit administration and accounting for Medigap insurers, so they just pay out what CMS tells them to pay. And for this light workload, they skim off an average of 20% of premiums paid for overhead & profit. Thus, you can safely choose the insurer with the lowest premium, they're all the same. United American seems to be the low cost operator in this space.
intercst
No. of Recommendations: 1
{{ Scooting up the outside stairs on your butt is fine in good weather, but a bit limiting in rain/snow. }}
Yes, in the 14-day, in patient, "fast rehab" program they taught me butt bumping.
https://youtu.be/2Z6_WELbW7wThe day I got home from the hospital, I realized that it took the same amount to effort to lower my body to the step for "butt bumping", as it did to raise my body up to the next step -- that was the end of "butt bumping".
The next day I found that it saved even more energy if I went down the stairs two steps at a time.
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/xr-Fq4ph_2s?feature...intercst
No. of Recommendations: 9
The day I got home from the hospital, I realized that it took the same amount to effort to lower my body to the step for "butt bumping", as it did to raise my body up to the next step -- that was the end of "butt bumping".
Glad you figured out what worked best for you. For me and my bum knee and short legs, the pain of "walking" up the stairs was excruciating, and it was much less painful, SAFER, and easier to scoot up on my butt, using my one good leg. Going down was relatively easy, just using one crutch for my bad leg. These are outside deck steps that would not make code these days for steepness.
Happily, the pain is gone at this point and I can get around without any support, even on stairs. Though still feeling compromised, it is one heck of a lot better. It's very nice to be back in a bed at night, instead of the Lazy Boy. For about a week, the torque on my knee from the sheets grabbing my foot as I turned kept me from getting any sleep in a bed. I see the doctor on Wednesday for a chat about the MRI. From what AI told me about the MRI report, it looks as though surgery is in my future...hopefully just orthoscopic, but I didn't understand the hedging about the damage to the soft connective material and I chose to wait for my doctor and enjoy my family over the holidays, rather than getting mired down into AI speculation.
I have always been active and do physical work like a mule, never letting my gender or my age get me out of the hard stuff. Because I have the stronger back, I am the heavy lifter in my family. My theory was if you stop doing things for yourself, you stop being able to do. Have never had a physical roadblock before, and it is humbling. I can't say I am looking forward to old age and more roadblocks, but I guess I will just have to learn new ways to hurdle them. After all the help I got from DH for what is a much more minor issue than your amputation, I don't know how your did this alone. Something as simple as getting a cup of coffee was impossible. I could brew the pot, but if I didn't want to stand at the coffee maker to drink it, I needed help. I guess if help is not an option, you just have to figure it out.
IP,
/pity party
No. of Recommendations: 0
Good luck to both of you with your walking issues.
So far I've been lucky and just have an annoying lower back issue. One of the few advantages of not having an active outdoor lifestyle or organized sporting background is a lack of knee/hip/etc. injuries from wear and tear. I worked with an older guy who was quite active in hiking and skiing and had both hips replaced fairly early in life.
Have a great New Year and hopefully good health.
Rich
