Medicak insurance is actually mis-named. It only pays (some) costs, it does not insure your health. What if you delay retirement for 10 years waiting for better insurance and then drop dead the day after you retire? They can put on the tombstone ‘He had a great medical plan’, but that will be a poor substitute for 10 years of living versus ‘existing’

Rest assured I visit this site daily, but I can be lazy by nature and not leave any comments as often as I would like.
Besides that who really wants to hear a Disgruntal Mailman spout off.

Haven’t seen you here for a while. Apparently, something crossed wires between what I wrote and hat I conveyed here. One of my options when I moved to the Philippines would hav ebene to keep my GEHA (one of the Fereragl employee’s helath benefit plans for those not ‘in the know’). I didn’t want to spend nearly $170 a month on that. If I were a regular retiriee my only other option would be to drop my federal health benefits totally .. an irrevocable decison that seems a bit too ‘forever’ for me to make.

But becaise I am also retired military (and to all you out there who always moan about how ‘lucky’ I am in holding that status, you had the same option, where were you)? I have TRICARE, the program the US military replaced it’s promise of lifetine ehalth care with. Because I have TRICARE, the government allows me to suspend, but not cancel, my federal benefits.

I have no intention of ever reactivating those benefits. Thye are there strictly as along-term safety net in case of circumstances I can’t see now. I certainly wouldn’t reactivate them to pay an $860 dollar operation fee, that’s for sure … that was kind of the whole point, even paying out of pocket for an $860 medical bill I am way ahead of the game over paying the $170 a month for GEHA.

In just over a tear I turn 65, God willing, and then I have to decide if I want to take Medicare Paty B (currently $90 something a month, becuase no matter what iunsurnce I also have, Medicare becomes my primwe carrier .. even the miliary program chnages to TRICARE for Life which only begins to pay what Medicare does not.

The US healthcare system is a friggin mess.
Insurance companies dictate to the Docs what procedures they can and cannot do
They dictate to the Docs what amount of $ the will be reimbursed for the procedures.
If the Docs dont like accept amount ,then the Unsurance companies do not put those Docs on the list of Docs that the insured people can use.
So the Docs are forced to take the Fast Food approach and see as many patients as possible every day. Healthcare is now a numbers game. Friggin SAD.

So you reactivated your GEHA get the procedure done then you can submit your bills to them to be reimbursed.
Fancy thinking for a non emergency procedure, but would that backfire on you if you had your GEHA in active and then some kind of emergency injury/hospitalization came up.

I’ve written here many times about Is PhilHealth Worth It? : PhilFAQS , A Trip To PhilHealth : PhilFAQS , and Philippine Questions and Answers — 26 Mar 2009 . there are more I am sure.

Bottom line is, any Filipino can avail for what amounts to dirt cheap, and you don’t have to live your life as distctated by the current US gear mongers. The US is only number one aspect of health care … cost to the consumer.