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Doctors Take Medicare and are Near Me

Bob Vineyard · March 11, 2022 · Leave a Comment

Which doctors take Medicare? Where do I find a list of Medicare approved doctors that are near me? How do I know if my doctor is in network? Do I need a referral to see a specialist? Can I keep my current doctors or will I need to change? Georgia Medicare Plans answers your questions.

Good news!

When you have original Medicare there are no networks, referrals are not required, you do not need to pick a PCP (primary care physician)

When choosing a Medicare plan you should always ask your current doctors if they participate in Medicare. According to a recent survey, 98% of primary care physicians accept original Medicare.

Yes, it is True, MOST Doctors Take Medicare, but Some Opt Out

What can you do if your doctor will no longer accept Medicare? Do you look for a new doctor or pay cash?

Doctors take Medicare

The message above is extreme . . . and more likely an exaggeration . . . if you read her posts. This one in particular references things that happen in a MANAGED CARE plan . . . such as an HMO or PPO.

Leverages a $50 penalty against me when my patients accidentally go to out-of-network labs.

Charges me hundreds of dollars of “membership fees” before I’m allowed to see their patients.

Assigns me patients who have not selected me as their doctor.

Insurance companies have done all of these things to me. My choice to end my relationships with abusive insurance companies will never impact the quality of medical care that you’ll receive from me. I will always care for you even if I do not care for your insurance company.

ALL of the above complaints are what can be expected in an HMO or PPO Advantage care INSURANCE plan.

Medicare is NOT insurance . . . it is a taxpayer funded, health care reimbursement plan, that does not assign patients to a doctor they do not want . . . does not penalize the doctor, OR patient, if they go out of network (original Medicare does NOT have networks . . . and Medicare does not charge “membership fees” to providers.

Are Concierge Doctors an Option?

Some medical practices, including those who have opted out of Medicare, now see patients on a “cash only” basis.

This type of medical office is typically primary care only, although some may incorporate a few specialists (such as dermatology) in the mix. A concierge practice usually offers extra benefits such as valet parking, “no wait” appointments, telehealth consults and so forth.

Most do not accept ANY insurance plan and will not bill Medicare or your insurance plan. I have a video that addresses some of the Problems with Concierge Medicine and Medicare.

Are There Doctors Near Me That Accept Medicare Patients?

Regardless of whether you live in a large metro area or a small, rural town, it is almost always possible to find a provider that accepts original Medicare. Any doctor that takes Medicare will ALSO accept your Medigap (Medicare supplement) plan, regardless of the issuing carrier.

By choosing a doctor who accepts Medicare, you’ll ensure you are charged the negotiated and acceptable rate. Your doctor’s office will also bill Medicare for your visit. In most cases, a doctor who accepts Medicare will also wait to hear back from Medicare before asking you to pay any cost difference if appropriate. https://www.healthline.com/health/medicare/doctors-that-accept-medicare-near-me

You can also use the Medicare Physician Finder to search for Medicare participating providers near you.

How do I find a doctor who accepts Medicare assignment?

The Medicare Physician Finder will help you identify providers that accept Medicare assignment.

Will my doctor accept my Medicare Advantage plan?

The Medicare Physician Finder does not have information about HMO and PPO network providers. You will need to ask your Medicare Advantage plan to help you identify par providers. Using non-par providers can result in higher OOP (out of pocket) costs to you.

What Does Medicare Physician Compare Offer?

Physician Compare only lists professionals that accept Medicare. Although some may also accept Advantage plans, it does not have information about which carriers and plans the may accept. PPO plans are much different from HMO plans, and you may not have access to ALL your doctors if you have a managed care plan.

Should I ask my doctor about Medicare? Will they accept ALL Medicare plans? How about original Medicare? Are all my doctors in network? Is Medicare and a supplement plan better than Medicare Advantage? How much more will I pay for using an out of network doctor?

Ask your doctor if Medicare covers your existing medications and treatment. Based on your medical history, what type of plan is better for you? Original Medicare and Medigap or a PPO Advantage plan?

Where Can I Learn More About Doctors that Accept Medicare?

Medicare information. Our videos help you to understand about Medicare options. You have questions, I have answers. Medicare supplement plans, Medicare Advantage vs Medicare supplement. Medicare Part A, Medicare Part B. Which Medicare plan is BEST? How to change Medicare plans? Medicare supplements plan G information and rates. Which Medicare options are best? What is original Medicare? What are Medicare basics? Turning 65 Medicare? Help understanding Medicare. Medicare explained.

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Medicare Supplement Plans, Georgia Medicare Plans, Senior News doctors near me that accept Medicare patients, doctors that take Medicare, Georgia Medicare Supplement Plans, medicare advantage, Medicare supplement plan G

Does Medicare Cover COVID Testing and Treatment in 2020?

Bob Vineyard · December 16, 2020 · Leave a Comment

Does Medicare cover COVID testing? What are COVID-19 symptoms? Is Coronavirus treatment in and out of the hospital included in Medicare? How much will I have to pay for care?

Does Medicare Cover COVID Testing and Treatment?

Coronavirus testing is included in your Medicare Part B coverage. Your cost for testing should be $0 when the test is conducted by a lab, pharmacy, doctor or hospital.

Your test should be ordered by your doctor to diagnose or rule out the COVID infection.

You, as an individual, may choose to have the screening for personal reasons. This would not be considered medically necessary and would not be covered by Medicare.

What are COVID symptoms that indicate I may be infected?

Symptoms may appear 2-14 days after exposure to the virus. People with these symptoms may have COVID-19:

  • Fever or chills
  • Cough
  • Shortness of breath or difficulty breathing
  • Fatigue
  • Muscle or body aches
  • Headache
  • New loss of taste or smell
  • Sore throat
  • Congestion or runny nose
  • Nausea or vomiting
  • Diarrhea

Will Medicare Cover My Coronavirus Treatment in or out of the Hospital?

Seriously ill patients may need inpatient and/or outpatient services. Medicare covers inpatient hospital stays, skilled nursing facility (SNF) stays, some home health visits, and hospice care under Part A. Beneficiaries who need medical care following a hospitalization have coverage in a skilled nursing facility.

FAQ from Kaiser Foundation

You will find a wealth of information from the Washington Post. These reports are available at no charge. You do not need to register to view the articles.

Am I considered “high risk” for Contracting the Chinese Virus?

Older adults and those with compromised immune systems tend to be more susceptible to contracting the disease.

Medical conditions including high blood pressure, diabetes, COPD, and asthma can tax your immune system putting you in a higher risk category than the rest of the population.

Additional information about COVID-19 from these resources
https://www.coronavirus.gov/
https://www.usa.gov/coronavirus

CORONAVIRUS Facts to Ease Your Fears

The CDC estimates the overall fatality rate is .26%.

Ninety-four percent of COVID-19 deaths involve, on average, 2.6 additional conditions or causes of death.

Those outside of nursing homes, the infection fatality rate is estimated to be just 0.13 percent.

About one-third of Covid-19 deaths occur in nursing homes, or other long-term care facilities.

For more information visit Flatten The Fear

What do I Need to Know about the Vaccine?

Coronavirus vaccines MAY prevent you from contracting the disease. As with any medication or vaccination, there may be side effects.

You may have pain or swelling where you received the shot.

You could also experience fever, chills, tiredness or headache.

Tests indicate the vaccine may be 90 to 95% effective in preventing the virus.

It is not yet known if the vaccine will prevent you from getting sick or it merely prevents you from having symptoms of the disease. “Full” protection may require a second dose.

Questions still remain about the vaccinations. Among those include:

What COVID-19 vaccines have been approved and how do they work?

Can the vaccine give you COVID-19?

Are there some people who should NOT get the vaccination?

If I have tested positive for the illness should I still get the vaccine?

Do I still need to wear a mask or practice social distancing after getting the shot?

Should I still use hand sanitizer and wash my hands after being in public?

Do I need to avoid contact with others if I have a fever or feel sick?

Medicare telehealth video

Coronavirus and Medicare Advantage plans.

Shop and compare Georgia Medicare plans and supplement rates. Bob Vineyard, GA Medicare insurance agent. Anthem Blue Cross Medigap rates available on request. Quoted on the phone and a report sent by email.

#CoronavirusAndMedicareCoverage #DoesMedicarePayForCOVID19TestingAndTreatment #GeorgiaMedicarePlans

Medicare Supplement Plans, Georgia Medicare Plans, Senior News coronavirus, covid-19, medicare, vaccine

Why Elderly Need Google Home

Bob Vineyard · June 4, 2019 · Leave a Comment

Google Home for your elderly parents? How seniors with mobility or vision issues can benefit from a smart speaker. Control the temperature or call for help with just your voice.

Google Home for elderly
Google Home for Elderly

Google Home Smart Assistant

“Hey Google, call Mom”. Worried about your mother? Ask your smart device to give Mom a call.

Follow this link If you want to know how to set up smart speakers to make phone calls.

You can also search for video instructions. As a visual learner, I find it much easier to follow video instructions.

Nurses Like Smart Devices

What triggered this interest in Google Home for seniors?

A few weeks ago one of my news alerts had this teaser headline, “Why Google Home is Perfect for Seniors“. Up to this point I considered smart speakers to be a novelty. There are a few in my home, split between the Amazon Echo and Google Home.

I haven’t (yet) plugged into the whole “smart home” program. I still turn on the lights with my hands and TV with a remote.

Coffee is made in a French press, so no way to make it smart.

According to Nurse Next Door “one of these technologies is Google Home, a voice-activated daily assistant that can control devices around the house, make calls, provide entertainment, and answer over 100 million unique questions. You can link it to the TV, radio, thermostat and more by installing a compatible device and activating connections on your phone’s Home app. This virtual helper responds to voice commands, which means that someone with limited vision or reduced finger dexterity can easily use it.”

Why Elderly Need Google Home

Google Engineer Helps Dad with Parkinson’s

I also discovered this story about Stephanie Wilson and how she helped her parents live a fuller life with Google Home and Smart Assistant.

Wilson’s parents, Fred and Linda, live in a condo, and Fred uses a wheelchair. About 10 years ago, the University of Toronto philosophy professor was diagnosed with Parkinson’s, a degenerative brain disorder that leads to loss of muscle control.

When Wilson heard her father talking about how hard it was to control the lights, she installed smart bulbs around the condo. Now, her parents control the lights by speaking to Google Home.

Link to Stephanie’s video and very moving story.

Hey Google – How Does Medicare Work?

Word of advice. If you ask Google about Medicare you will most likely hear “Sorry, I don’t know that one”.

If you want solid Medicare advice, ask GA Medicare expert Bob Vineyard. If you just want rates check out GA Medigap Quotes.

#GAMedicareExpert #GoogleHome #SmartDevice #GAMedigapQuotes #GAMedigapRates

Senior News, Medicare Supplement Plans Alexa, elderly, Google Home, mobility issues, smart assistant, Smart device, vision challenges

Mining for Gold in the Silver Market

Bob Vineyard · September 15, 2014 ·

Data miners are mining for gold among silver (and blue) haired retirees. Is your private information really private? How do you protect your personal information from being mined for gold and sold to marketers? Is HIPPA truly effective in protecting your information?

According to an ABC News report, your private medical information is not so private.

Mining for data gold

Identity theft gets all the press, but the focus is on credit thieves. There is an even bigger market in your PHI (personal health information).

data mining for gold

Medicare fraud takes center stage for medical identity theft but there is gold in your diagnosis. Some thieves simply want your Medicare number to facilitate fraudulent claims. Others want to sell you diabetic supplies, durable medical equipment and even adult diapers.

Dan Abate doesn’t have diabetes nor is he aware of any obvious link to the disease. Try telling that to data miners.

The 42-year-old information technology worker’s name recently showed up in a database of millions of people with “diabetes interest” sold by Axciom

Bloomberg

Your medical condition is gold for data miners. But what about Dan Abate? He doesn’t have diabetes. So where did these modern day prospectors get his name?

Possibly from a list of charitable donors that made contributions for diabetes research.

Where does your information go?

ABC News “found somebody willing to sell a data dump of diabetic patients with information including their names, birth dates and who their insurance provider was, among other details. Another seller offered 100,000 records of customers who purchased health insurance in the last three to 12 months.”

Some of this data is selling for as little as $0.15 per name. Miners have access to your name, date of birth, address, phone number and more.

Who is looking in your medicine cabinet?

Forget the NSA. They are supposedly looking for national security threats.

Data miners have been quietly using their tools to peek into America’s medicine cabinets. Tapping social media, health-related phone apps and medical websites, data aggregators are scooping up bits and pieces of tens of millions of Americans’ medical histories. Even a purchase at the pharmacy can land a shopper on a health list.

(Consumers are) showing up in directories with names like “Suffering Seniors” or “Aching and Ailing,” according to a Bloomberg review of this little-known corner of the data mining industry. Other lists are categorized by diagnosis, including groupings of 2.3 million cancer patients, 14 million depression sufferers and 600,000 homes where a child or other member of the household has autism or attention deficit disorder.

Your information is probably out there already. If you are getting unsolicited calls, email or junk mail for medical items you may (or may not) want or need, chances are you have landed on some thieves list.

What about my HIPPA rights?

The truth is, you have no HIPPA rights.

HIPPA is a “feel good” law that imposes fines and even jail time for those that do not take precautions to keep your private information private. Once your information is stored electronically “in the cloud” or transmitted to another facility data miners have the ability to mine for gold.

nighthawk services

HIPPA laws do not apply when your data leaves the United States. Insurance carriers routinely provide access to customer service reps in other countries. Medical facilities use overseas  diagnosticians for reading X-rays and digital images.

I blogged on Nighthawk Radiology Services at InsureBlog back in 2006. The linked post addresses your loss of HIPPA rights once your data leaves the United States.

HIPPA laws do not prevent data mining any more the drunk driving laws eliminate driving while intoxicated. But they do provide civil and criminal penalties for malicious disobedience.

How do I protect my private information?

Believe it or not, most consumers willingly give up their data without thinking about it.

When you go online looking for information about a medical condition, medication or even insurance quotes you run the risk of voluntarily handing your information over to data miners looking for gold.

Most insurance quoting sites take the information you volunteer and sell that data to insurance agents and marketers.

Georgia Medicare Plans and GA Medigap Quotes NEVER sells your data. We provide you with an online quote that allows you to view rates and benefits on as many Medigap plans as you wish. Your name, DOB and other information is stored in a secure site that can only be accessed by Bob Vineyard.

When you get a secure quote from us here is what will happen.

  • You will receive an email, thanking you for visiting our site.
  • Shortly after that I will send you an email with rates on our most popular plan based on your age and zip code
  • I will call you a few days later to answer any questions

You will receive additional emails from time to time providing you with general information about Medicare. You will also receive periodic emails on retiree related topics.

You may opt out of future emails at any time and your data is NEVER SOLD.

medicareplansgeorgia

Do other marketing firms sell my data?

They can sell your information to gold miners but they can only do it legally if you give them permission. This disclosure is usually in the fine print at the bottom of an opt in page that most people never bother to read.

AARP is the largest senior focused marketing firm in the country. Do they use your private information?

You bet they do.

And how they collect and use your information is spelled out in their 12 point privacy notice.

Selling your information to travel agencies and insurance companies is how they keep the lights on at AARP.

Data mining is gold for marketers. Keep that in mind the next time you go online or fill out a request for information card and mail it back in.

#datamining #HIPPA #personalhealthinformation

Medicare, Senior News AARP, HIPPA, medigap rates, personal information

What Causes Heart Disease – Science or Sham?

Bob Vineyard · September 8, 2014 ·

dr lundell

What really causes heart disease? Diet? Lifestyle? Does Dr. Dwight Lundell have the answer? Or is it all a sham? Can damage to the heart be reversed?

Causes of Heart Disease

Can we prevent heart disease? Can the damage be reversed with diet?

An Arizona heart surgeon’s claim that a diet of unprocessed foods – not necessarily low-fat foods – can prevent and even reverse heart disease has ignited the Internet.

Dr. Dwight Lundell has dished the dirt on ‘what really causes heart disease’ and he admits prescribing cholesterol-lowering medications, and a low-fat, high-simple carbohydrate diet for two-and-a-half decades was misguided.

‘These recommendations are no longer scientifically or morally defensible,’

Daily Mail UK

I doubt if anyone will disagree with Dr. Lundell’s basic premise that diet and lifestyle are major contributors to heart disease.

Daily doses of high fat foods, processed grains and fats aren’t healthy. But who really eats like that?

He explains that this once ‘healthy’ diet actively destroys the walls of our blood vessels by causing chronic inflammation. This inflammation makes cholesterol stick to the walls, forming the plaques that eventually block them, resulting in a heart attack or stroke.

Sounds logical.

Build of up cholesterol leads to hardening of the arteries, restricting blood flow and leading to heart disease. And his comments just seem to resonate.

Don’t eat anything your grandmother wouldn’t recognize as food, eat plenty of fruits and vegetables, and lean protein, he recommends

But is he oversimplifying things? Is his Marcus Welby approach helpful?

And is he giving us the kind of advice that really works or is this all a sham?

medigap quote CW

Science or Sham?

Is Dr. Lundell a real doctor or is there something about his past we need to know?

Dr. Stephen Barrett takes a look at this approach to curing heart disease.

Dwight C. Lundell, M.D. lost medical license in 2008. Since that time he has been promoting books that clash with established scientific knowledge of heart disease prevention and treatment. His book,The Great Cholesterol Lie, invites people to “forget about everything you have been told about low-fat diets, saturated fats, cholesterol and the causes of heart disease.” 

Quackwatch

In his post, Dr. Barrett attacks the character of Dr. Lundell without really addressing the underlying issue.

Is the advice offered by Dr. Lundell factual and sound or is it quackery just to sell books?

There is nothing in Dr. Barretts post to indicate if the advice is good or not. Instead he closes with a comment stating he does not trust the advice of Dr. Lundell.

You decide.

Medicare Advice – Good or bad?

When you turned 65 and went on Medicare, did you really understand how the various parts work? Or were you more confused than ever?

A simple 15 minute phone conversation with Bob Vineyard at Georgia Medicare Plans will reveal more about how Medicare works than you can gain from weeks and months of studying Medicare brochures, attending seminars, having a parade of agents in your home, talking to your friends or going online.

Over 98% of the people we talk with picked the wrong Medicare plan (based on their needs and budget) and are paying too much. On average, we save our Medigap clients more than $450 per year on the exact same coverage they have now. A simple switch in plans can add another $300 in savings.

How much can you save?

medicareplansgeorgia

Medicare, Senior News diet, heart disease, medicare doctors, medigap rates

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