Medicare Advantage Part C One of SCJ editors had an interesting experience recently with Medicare Part C.  That is the Medicare Advantage program which seniors can opt for instead of Original Medicare. Medicare Advantage programs are offered by private insurance companies and provide coverage for hospitals, medical and prescription drugs; they replace Original Medicare.// A [...]

Medicare Costs Reviewed It is a good practice to review what you pay for Medicare annually.  This article will lead you through what to look at in your individual circumstances.// The Medicare benefits are provided in four parts: Part A – Hospital Care Part B – Medical Care (physicians, testing and imaging, screenings, etc) Part [...]

Interpret the Language of Politics Senior Citizen Journal has written in the past about attempts of politicians to manipulate senior citizen opinion through scare tactics.  They know that if they can just get us frightened enough, we will do whatever they tell us we need to do to remain ‘safe’. Well, that is, ‘safe’ as [...]

Changes in Health Care Laws Help Seniors The changes brought by the Affordable Health Care Act are already helping senior citizens better manage their health care at a lower out of pocket cost. Seniors have saved $460M on prescription drugs since the law passed.  Almost one million people in the ‘doughnut hole’ category received a [...]

Conversation Begins Now Senior citizens across the country are clear about Social Security:  Leave.  It.  Alone. We feel frustration, anger and fear over what Congress could do to the financial security that means so much in our personal lives.// A lot of us seniors live on less than $20k a year.  We cannot afford to [...]

Controlling One’s Own Investments One of the issues being bantered around about Social Security privatization is whether or not individuals could invest better on their own or not.  The reality is that some seniors could probably do better, particularly if they had a lot of experience managing their own investments pre-retirement and learned successful investing [...]

Seniors Targeted by Scam Artists Senior citizens, with their lifelong savings stacked up, as well as a habit of not checking free credit reports frequently, make for a perfect target for identity thieves nowadays. The federal government has// thereby requested senior citizens to stay alert against the prevalent medicare scams that may separate them from [...]

Open Enrollment Beginning and Ending Earlier This Year Just a reminder to our readers… Open Enrollment begins and ends earlier this year (2011).  And the ending date is coming up within 10 days.  If you want to make changes in your plan, you need to do so by December 7. The Medicare.gov site says this: [...]

The Truth About Medicare Treatment House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, was recently invited to write an article for AARP Bulletin about the Republican Plan for Medicare.  In that article he wrote, “In the health care law that passed last year, the Democrats who run Washington revealed their solution: a panel of 15 unelected bureaucrats whose [...]

Senior Citizen Journal has received several requests to ‘explain Medicare’.  We’ve taken a look at the resources on the Internet, and will take a stab at an explanation here today.  Although a number of countries have Medicare programs, this discussion will be limited to the program in the United States.// Explain Medicare Medicare is a [...]