10-07-2016, 09:18 AM
A lot of us agree with Lee M-S that Kaiser wants to get rid of its non-Oahu Medicare patients. (FWIW, they haven't offered Medicare Advantage programs on Kauai for years, if ever.) As far as transportation costs, it's not just the regular flights for services not offered here, but the extremely expensive medivac flights for critical patients that hit their bottom line hard. Even though they are a non-profit, I accept the fact that they still have a bottom line to watch.
I've done some research, and somewhat to my surprise, the cost for the "new" Medicare Advantage being offered by Kaiser is only slightly above the national average of similar plans. I've talked to several different people with Kaiser Medicare from different backgrounds about this, and the part that seems to be causing the most anger is the sudden and dramatic tripling of the cost for essentially what they had before in terms of usable benefits. And that's the part that makes me think they want to get rid of Medicare patients. The cost environment for Medicare patients has absolutely been rising, but it hasn't tripled in the last year. Any insurance company with competent accountants would have made incremental price increases and/or benefit changes in the face of such a cost environment. Kaiser did not.
I tend to be cynical when it comes to badly managed Hawaii civic institutions, and this insurance company has now joined that category.
I've done some research, and somewhat to my surprise, the cost for the "new" Medicare Advantage being offered by Kaiser is only slightly above the national average of similar plans. I've talked to several different people with Kaiser Medicare from different backgrounds about this, and the part that seems to be causing the most anger is the sudden and dramatic tripling of the cost for essentially what they had before in terms of usable benefits. And that's the part that makes me think they want to get rid of Medicare patients. The cost environment for Medicare patients has absolutely been rising, but it hasn't tripled in the last year. Any insurance company with competent accountants would have made incremental price increases and/or benefit changes in the face of such a cost environment. Kaiser did not.
I tend to be cynical when it comes to badly managed Hawaii civic institutions, and this insurance company has now joined that category.