All,

My Medicare starts from 1/1/2010, and I will be covered under my wife's insurance starting 12/1/2009. I checked with my wife's insurance and they are ok with me having two insurance, which is them and Medicare.

Now my question is: is it worth trying to get Secondary Medicare Supplement Plan like Anthem? I suppose not, but just wanted to confirm and find out what fellow PALSs have done.

I would think having the two insurances should give a pretty nice coverage plan. One will be your primary and one secondary. Depending how your wife's insurance works. I am glad you have both, good to hear that.

Nishant ... I'm not sure how Antham works, but here in some areas of Southern California, there are plans offered through respectable companies for people on medicare requiring no premiums whatsoever. They are HMOs, so you can't pick your own doctors, but before the medicare drug benefit was enacted, they seemed a good deal, as they paid for drugs where medicare didn't.

I didn't realize that in obtaining the plans, I had signed away my medicare benefits to Blue Shield. BS makes its profit by undercutting medicare's prices by requiring you to go to their doctors and pressuring doctors and hospitals and pharmacists to pay less than they would pay to medicare. So BS gets reimbursed by medicare for the higher prices and uses its market clout to squeeze the health providers.

My problems arose when I had difficulty getting the basic things medicare provides ... which bs is contractually obligated to provide to me. So I may switch back to medicare during the change/over period this year, although overall, it has certainly been a money saver.

My gut reaction is to have no more than two insurance companies, because of paperwork and the tendency of all insurers to get the other guy to pay. If you have a primary and a secondary insurance, having a tertiary one could just create red tape up the wazoo. Unless your wife may change jobs, or you are unhappy with her coverage, I'd be careful. If you have an agent, talk to him or her, or get advice from the HR dept. where your wife works.