Today I received a solicitation from AARP's United Healthcare Insurance Company for the AARP Medicare Supplement Insurance.
I thoroughly read through each and every page of the material I received, and not once did it mention what coverage I would receive! It did suggest they have a variety of plans giving me a choice of options. Yet not once did they tell me what each of those plans did, or did not cover. It did however tell me about there being a pre-existing condition exclusion and enough gobbledy-gook about that perhaps not applying, that it would take a Miami lawyer to tell you whether you were or were not qualified under pre-existing health care coverages or not. They use the term "other exclusions may apply" but don't tell you what those exclusions might be.
The insert sheet shows plans A through L yet doesn't fully explain what you do or do not get under each plan. The heading states "See Outlines of Coverage Section for details about ALL Plans". That would be nice except there was NO Outlines of coverage section included. I did receive a rate sheet however that would allow me to choose a rate starting from $$75.60 all the way to $145.60 for "Early Enrollment Discount rates" and from $108 to $208 in the future. A supplemental piece of paper included in the package states that the plan rates shown in this package are only good for 2009. Yet the solicitation and application are for coverage effective 1/1/2010! Thus if your Medicare rates increase, so will this. And then you have no idea what you will be paying!
Finally, reading the printed page, the kicker is this statement:" This material describes the plans available through the AARP Health Care Options program but is not considered a health insurance contract or insurance certificate.
Folks, you aren't getting health insurance or health coverage, but a plan of some sort that seems very undefined. After reading it again, I can't determine what I would be paying for. And, I have experience in the insurance and healthcare field, unlike most others who have to wade through the Medicare minefield all alone and uneducated about the pitfalls.
The cover letter says call them and I, frankly, won't do that. I have had dealings with AARP in the past and they seem to have the phones handled by sharks who simply want to sell you something. I once called about auto insurance and the woman hounded me on the phone to sign up, although the coverage she was hawking was hundreds more than the AAA coverage I already had, and the AARP program even had worse coverage to boot! Then I was subject to a barrage of unwanted mail and phone solicitations for months trying to sell me more insurance. Still receive tons of junk about some form of insurance from these people just about every week.
If you can't get a clear answer to what you're buying, don't buy it. Paying for something when you don't know what you're getting is what I call paying for "air biscuits." Sounds good but no substance.
Finally, on Page 31 of the December 2009 AARP Bulletin, they have a Scam Alert on buying worthless or less than value insurance policies. Maybe they should have named themselves in that article as Consumer Reports and others have in the past!
http://bulletin.aarp.org/yourmoney/scamalert/articles/when_health_insurance_is_phony_.html
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