> I'll bite, how do you know that one? This conversation is incredibly fascinating to me. I have lots of Medicare horror stories, from both personal and profe

> I'll bite, how do you know that one? This conversation is incredibly fascinating to me. I have lots of Medicare horror stories, from both personal and professional experience. I founded a health-tech company aimed at ensuring that people who were discharged from the ER received proper outpatient followup care. This is a big problem - most people who leave the ER receive their next medical care from another physician in the ER (ie, a subsequent visit). There are a lot of reasons that patients don't have followup care, but a big one is the amount of coordination and effort required. A lot of that we could automate or do efficiently, because we were handling the process for many patients at once. But dealing with Original Medicare[0] was particularly awful. Original Medicare's coverage is actually quite terrible (from the patient's perspective) and, to make matters worse, lots of providers don't accept Original Medicare[1], because it's a lot of hassle and may not even pay for itself. We had by far the hardest time with Original Medicare patients compared to Medicare Advantage patients. Even Medicaid was arguably better, for reasons which aren't relevant here. From a personal standpoint, I've seen how frustrating it is to arrange for proper care for family members on Medicare, and that's with the knowledge we have about how the whole system works together. For ongoing care, such as physical therapy or dialysis[2], Medicare will often cover a small amount, but not enough to really make an impact. Say, you need three sessions a week, but Medicare only covers one. However, because providers can't bill a patient directly for services that Medicare does cover (even if Medicare won't cover that service, because the patient has hit their cap, or whatever reason), that means you... can't receive it from that same provider. So you have to find a different provider for the remainder, which means you now have two different providers and all the problems that means. That is, of course, assuming you manage to find one who will let you self-pay, and you have to cover it out of pocket. To be fair, that last point applies both to Original Medicare and Medicare Advantage; Original Medicare just happens to be worse about it. [0] Original Medicare is the term used for Medicare plans that aren't offered through private insurers [1] e.g. http://www.oregonlive.com/finance/index.ssf/2015/10/medicare_2015_more_doctors_rej.html http://www.oregonlive.com/finance/index.ssf/2015/10/medicare... [2] Dialysis is actually particularly heinous for another reason - due to a legal loophole, Medicare basically forces private insurers to pay for nearly all dialysis, albeit indirectly.