Page 4 - Cover Letter and Evaluation for Forrest Hoover

substantial premiums adjustments, although occasionally they will be charged higher premiums
or denied coverage.

If you later want to upgrade to a more comprehensive plan, you will have to disclose any pre-
existing conditions you may have. The exceptions are the AARP-endorsed policies sold by
UnitedHealthcare, which in most states allow you to upgrade to another AARP plan without
being medically screened. If this is something you want to consider, you should verify with
AARP that this policy is still in effect in your state. But AARP does not sell the high-deductible
version of Plan F, and so to take advantage of this upgrade policy you would need to buy one of
the less comprehensive plans that AARP/UnitedHealthcare does sell.

If you decide to get a Medigap policy, it’s good to give some thought as to the company that
you will buy your policy from and to make a few calls to get current quotes. While it’s important
to go with a company that has relatively low premiums, you may also want to factor in a
company’s financial strength and size. As a rule, larger companies have slightly lower annual
premium increases, according to a government study a few years ago.

The premium comparisons in Appendices B2 and B3 are from CSG Actuarial. For future
reference, the Medicare counseling agency for Indiana uses the online CSG Actuarial premiums,
and you can go to this site to get current quotes for various plans based on your age, gender,
smoking status, and zip code:

https://tools.csgactuarial.com/medicare-supplement

This link works only for people who want to compare premiums in Indiana (and not in other
states). As noted, if you want to compare the benefit designs of the various Medigap plans, you
can see them on pages 6-7 of your evaluation.

Some premiums in the CSG Actuarial comparisons may be lower than you can get because the
commissions may not be included (unfortunately, there’s no way to filter these out or for me to
know which ones they are). Most of these premiums, though, should be close to current
quotes.

CSG Actuarial’s premiums can be helpful in a couple of ways. First, they can serve as a starting
point to identify the companies that have lower premiums; second, these quotes also show the
insurance companies’ financial ratings by A.M Best and (for the larger companies) Standard &
Poor. They do not show the companies’ phone numbers, which can be found in Appendix B1.

Discounts

Insurance companies that sell Medigap policies offer discounts of various kinds. As an example,
some companies have discounts for automatic debit payments of monthly premiums or for
paying a year’s premiums in advance. The largest discounts are typically available when both
spouses buy their policies from the same company. While not all companies offer these

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