Most articles I read about pros and cons on Medicare Advantage plans do not go into "what ifs". Here's a "what if" that is hair raising:
A person who was seemingly healthy, had a Medicare Advantage plan (notice, I said "had). They went to visit a grown child in another state. Unfortunately, they had a severe medical emergency shortly after arriving in that state and were admitted to the hospital. It was kidney failure.
Once the person was stabilized and put onto dialysis, the "emergency' was over. Unfortunately, as soon as it was no longer an emergency, the Medicare Advantage plan also stopped providing medical insurance because the person was not in their home state, and the MA plan is not obligated to provide "national insurance" coverage. However, the person was too sick to be transported home. Since they could not be immediately transported back to their home state when the emergency hit, there was also no medical coverage for transporting the very sick person back home.
The only thing the person could do was flip out of the Medicare Advantage plan and flip into Original Medicare (OM), which is possible because Medicare eligible people who are hospitalized get a "Special Enrollment" that allows them to do it. The person was also able to get a medigap, but only the most expensive one which was $400/mo. Also, the OM coverage only became effective the first of the next month, and the MA plan is refusing to cover the hospital days until the end of the month so the person has thousands of dollars of medical expenses to try to force the MA plan to pay by going through an very onerous appeals process.
The person is now "stuck" in another state until they are healthy enough to be able to travel back home.
