Seven things no AI can know about your Medicare
Medicare & Healthcare

Seven things no AI can know about your Medicare

An engineer's list. Some Medicare facts are not public yet, some are public but only county by county or state by state, and some exist only in your own file. A good AI assistant cannot know any of them, and the difference between a good one and a dangerous one is whether it says so. Here are the se

Did you give up on AI too soon?
Medicare & Healthcare

Did you give up on AI too soon?

It makes up sources. It gets things wrong. It argues. I hear all three from people who tried an AI assistant once or twice and put it down. Each complaint was true of the tool they were holding. Here is what has changed since, with dates, what has not, and a one-minute test for each that you can run

Two addresses, one plan, and the county line. What six months away does to a Medicare Advantage plan, the difference between visiting and moving, and why Original Medicare has no county line.
Medicare & Healthcare

Two addresses, one plan, and the county line. What six months away does to a Medicare Advantage plan, the difference between visiting and moving, and why Original Medicare has no county line.

Medicare Advantage is a county product. Leave the plan's service area for more than six months and the rules say the plan must drop you, with no replacement window waiting. Move for real and two doors open. Here is the regulation, the visitor exception some plans offer, what happens to a routine doc

TRICARE For Life. Thank you for your service. Here is what you need with it, what you do not, the one bill you still pay, and the two places the paperwork comes back.
Medicare & Healthcare

TRICARE For Life. Thank you for your service. Here is what you need with it, what you do not, the one bill you still pay, and the two places the paperwork comes back.

Military retirees get coverage with no enrollment and no premium of its own, and it pays what Medicare leaves behind. In return for a career, that is right. But it rides on Part B, and Part B is the bill. The four ways a claim pays, why you do not need a drug plan, what happens if you join an Advant

Three nights in a hospital bed that did not count. Observation versus inpatient, the notice they have to hand you, and the three-day rule that decides whether Medicare pays for rehab.
Medicare & Healthcare

Three nights in a hospital bed that did not count. Observation versus inpatient, the notice they have to hand you, and the three-day rule that decides whether Medicare pays for rehab.

You can sleep three nights in a hospital, in a gown, with a wristband, and be an outpatient the whole time. Then the rehab bill arrives. Here is the rule that makes that possible, the form the hospital must give you, the one question to ask while you are still in the bed, and the arithmetic: the sam

Same pill, same plan, different counter. Why one prescription costs more at the pharmacy across the street, what preferred actually means, and the thing your pharmacist is allowed to tell you.
Medicare & Healthcare

Same pill, same plan, different counter. Why one prescription costs more at the pharmacy across the street, what preferred actually means, and the thing your pharmacist is allowed to tell you.

Medicare's own words: preferred pharmacies may save you money because they have agreed to charge less than other pharmacies in your plan's network. Same drug, same plan, two prices. Here is the arithmetic on three prescriptions at two counters, when mail order wins and when it does not, the cash-pri