Page 3 - Evaluation for Harry Coverston

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 Appendix B1 are from the Florida Department of Insurance
Regulation and include insurance companies’ toll-free telephone numbers. This list is sorted by
the companies’ premiums for Plan G, with the lowest premiums listed first.

Appendices B2 and B3 are from CSG Actuarial, a firm that provides quotes to insurance agents.
Some premiums in the CSG lists 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). The CSG Actuarial 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 for 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
“household discounts,” the ones that do often have substantially reduced premiums. In
addition to discounts, some insurers provide extra benefits such as membership in Silver
Sneakers, which give you access to more than 12,000 gyms and health clubs nationally.

Medicare Advantage plans

As you are probably aware, Advantage plans are managed-care plans – primarily HMO’s and
PPO’s. Before enrolling in an Advantage plan, you should verify with your doctors’ offices that
they are in the plan’s network -- the online directories that we rely on are sometimes out of
date.

I was unable to find an Advantage plan in your area that includes both of your doctors in its
network. That eliminates Advantage HMO’s from consideration, since in an HMO if you see a
non-network doctor you will pay full cost unless it’s an emergency. It’s possible, of course, that
the provider directories are out of date, and so if you find an Advantage HMO plan that includes
both of your physicians I’ll be glad to include it at no added cost.

As far as I can tell, Dr. Maharaj is only in the networks of the AARP Advantage plans, whereas
Dr. Ilagen is in several networks, as shown on the attachment to this letter. I did not look at the
networks of the Allwell Advantage plans, which are too new to be rated by Medicare, nor at
that Advantage plans that are point-of-service (POS) plans, since these types of plans have high
numbers of complaints

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