when you say advantage plan do you mean Humana ? Where do you live?

I understand your frustration. THEre are many Medicare supplement plans out there (Humana, Summa, AARP, etc.) I just researched this whole thing for weeks and for me in my county the best is SummaCare HMO. The difficulty is that, although Medicare is a federal program, the states run it individually according to the particular laws that each state government put in place (personally, I'd rather have the federal gov. run it). I live in Ohio and here, it is even worse, the coverage in each COUNTY is different. WIth the whole thing having been privatized, some insurance companies have decided it is not profitable for them to over statewide coverage. I live in one county, but because of pending divorce I will be moving to another county before long . . . and I will have to switch not only doctors (perdictable) but I wlll have to switch my Medicare Advantage Supplement provider because their coverage in the new county sucks!!! Such headaches.

For you the first thing you should do is call your local Social Security office and ask them how you should go about registering for Medicare. Ohio has a special office to help and it was my local Social Security office that told me the phone number. Hopefully your state will have a similar one. You could also try calling your state government information main number and asking them if your state has an office that can help you.

You can also get info package from AARP, United Health Ins. Co., Summa, Aetna, etc. But it takes days to wade through all that paperwork . . . AARP will send a packet called, "Your Decision Guide."

The coverage, deduction, and monthly cost of each supplement is different. ANd each company has more than one plan (Summa had four in my county.). You can change plans once a year if your needs change but only during the specific time allowed (usually in the fall). My SummaCare Advantage supplement package is free, but I still have to pay the regular $100 or so Medicare premium. I choose to select a plan that was free, had no deductable for general doctor, but $45 deductable for each visit to a specialist. I am still in good health, as I age and my health gets bad I will probably have to go with a more expensive plan.

Good luck. Hope this lengthy answer helps.

I live in Louisiana

I would go with Humana if you have in LA , the advantage plan . we love it ..... if you dont have it then AARP advantage plan... NO HMOs

Did you know that there is a group on DS for just Medicare. Today they are discussing this very topic. Search for it and read that group's answers too.

sorry dont see the group you are talking about

It is "Senior Health & Aging. Apparently there are two kinds of groups here . . .. as the 7 groups that I have sampled and joined (some only for a short period) are now listed in two different places on my profile home page. Some groups are listed under "My Groups" and some are listed under "My SUpport Groups." Don't have any idea what the difference is. Still, both the "Medicare" group and the "Senior Health & Aging" are listed under the "My SUpport Group" portion. Have you trying typing that into the search bar? Have you tried looking under the alphabatical listings under the "S"? I can't do that and type on this page at the same time but I would think that would work. Let me know if it doesn't and I'll try to help further.l

Oops . . . this is the Senior Health & Aging group. My bad.

I just looked and the other group can be located under the "M" in the alphabetical listing of all the Support Groups. It is listed simly as "Medicare." It is not a particularly active group, but I check it out every few days just to see if anything important is being said there.