Regional Health Services of Howard County-Attention Seniors: Medicare Replacement Plans

For Seniors

Attention: Area Seniors

Recently, health insurance companies have been marketing their Medicare+Choice fee for service plans (such as UniCare’s Security Choice, Humana’s Gold Choice, Sterling Life Insurance’s Option 1 and United Healthcare’s Medicare Complete Essential). For seniors who sign up for these plans, they are opting out of their “traditional” or “original” Medicare insurance plans. Before you do, you need to know the following:

If you decide after twelve months that you want to switch back to “traditional” or “original” Medicare insurance, you MAY NOT BE ACCEPTED by any insurance company for supplemental health insurance.
There is no guarantee how high your premiums could be raised by these fee-for-service plans
Most rural hospitals in northeastern Iowa are federally certified and designated as Critical Access Hospitals (CAH). As CAH facilities, Medicare reimburses these hospitals their cost of providing care because it is important these facilities remain financially viable to continue providing care to rural residents. However, these fee for service plans pay these facilities SUBSTANTIALLY LESS than Medicare’s Critical Access Hospital reimbursement rates. Therefore, most of the rural hospitals in northeastern Iowa are NOT accepting these private fee-for-service plans.

Before you change health plans, ask yourself is this
“ too good to be true?”

Are short-term savings worth jeopardizing your availability to local healthcare services?

Do you think these companies really care if you have access to medical service in your own community?

This information is brought to you by Regional Health Services of Howard County, a federally designated Critical Access Hospital. We do NOT currently participate with any fee for service or Medicare Replacement plans.

If you have questions regarding this issue, please call Hospital Services at (563) 547-2101 and ask to speak to a representative in the Fiscal Services Department.