Phil Castell
Castell Insurance
426 E. Washington St., Sequim, WA 98382
Phone: 360-683-9284 • Fax: 360-683-9026
Phil@CastellInsurance.com
www.CastellInsurance.com  

 

It seems like every month I run across a few items that do not merit a whole article and because of that I frequently neglect to mention them. So, here are a few items that recently have hit my desk.

 

As I write this on Friday April 1, I want to publicly take my hat off in admiration to John Coulson of my office, for pulling a good April Fools’ joke on me. On the reader board of my office, he put that we had a free 2011 vehicle available if they called my cell phone. Can you imagine how many phone calls I had on that one day? All I will say at this point is that I have a whole year to plan my revenge.

 

In previous columns I have let you know that the funding for Medicare Advantage plans was scheduled to be decreased by a whopping 4 percent for calendar year 2012. I advised my clients that this could translate into a monthly premium increase of around $40-$50. It was just reported that CMS has announced the funding for Medicare Advantage plans will receive an increase in funding of 1.3 percent in 2012. I can only hope that this means that premium increases will be minor for 2012.

 

I only can assume this reversal was due to intense lobbying from the Medicare Advantage lobbyists representing the insurance industry.

Impact of costs

Last week the Wall Street Journal told of a new prostate cancer drug treatment that was just approved by Medicare. This new treatment is for very severe terminal cases and studies show that it will increase life expectancy four months versus two months for chemo alone. This average of an extra two months comes at a cost of $93,000 per patient.

 

That is fine as far as it goes, but the stunning statement of the article was that Medicare cannot take cost into account when approving new treatments. I find that amazing.

 

If I have to describe myself politically, I would call myself a fiscal conservative and find the anomalies between political statements and actual actions to be quite amazing.

Medicare on the go

The third item I would bring up is insurance while traveling. Most Medicare plans, either Advantage or supplements, will cover a foreign emergency. I recently have had a client use hospital services in Switzerland. The one thing I have found interesting is that if you are in a U.S. port on a cruise ship and seek medical attention, that is considered “foreign.” The reasons are that the ships generally are foreign vessels and the doctors or other practitioners are not participating in Medicare.

 

For most people, they do not need health insurance while traveling, but trip delay, cancellation coverage, etc., still is advisable.

 

I would like to remind people that Medicare now is including an “annual wellness visit” with no co-pay or deductibles. In talking to a few different doctors, I have managed to piece together the following. This annual wellness visit IS NOT an annual physical. I know of two doctors in Sequim who require their patients to have an annual physical and they advise their patients that the physical will not be covered by Medicare. Another doctor stated that the “wellness visit” is for a talking visit to review health and medications and does not cover anything where things are “hands on.”

 

And finally this is a statement made tongue in cheek. I recently was paying my Regence Blue Shield Medical premium and I noticed that the billing statement had little boxes for filling in the amount paid. I was amazed that the little boxes would allow premiums to be paid up to $9,999,999.99.

 

Can you imagine a $10 million premium? Maybe they have even more large premium increases planned.

Hey Regence, that was a joke.

 

Phil Castell is an independent insurance agent in Sequim. He can be reached at 683-9284 or PhilCastell@msn.com.