The Traps Within Medicare

by Philip Eliot | Aug 7, 2026 | General Nonfiction | 0 comments

Medicare is a maze of pitfalls, traps and consequences wrapped in strange language and acronyms. This book will guide you over, under, around or through all of the traps lying in wait for you within the Medicare maze. In a short, enjoyable 2 or 3 hour read, you will gain an education about the problems and the solutions within the care systems that many professionals struggle to comprehend. You will become a truly informed consumer, prepared to grapple with your own set of constraints as you pass the milestone of “Happy 65th!”Decisions you make at this critical time, when most new seniors are totally unprepared for the complexities ahead, will either help you or hurt you for many years to come. Many of those decisions are irrevocable. The solutions are affordable and relatively painless, for the well-informed. Read this book and find them.This is Mortimer’s fourth book on Medicare, fully updated for the 2027 plan year, and with a major innovation to make it a PERENNIAL EDITION: readers get an ANNUAL 4 page pdf insert by email, updating ALL major changes in the numbers and programs from Medicare, FREE OF CHARGE!Complexity and confusion are the earmarks of this system. Words often have quite different meanings than in simple English. One small example: the word “covered”. When we’re told that a procedure or treatment is “covered” by Medicare, our normal English interpretation is that our costs are taken care of.This is not the case, not by a long shot. Covered, to the folks at Medicare, means that they will pay *some part* of the cost, leaving us with sometimes huge out-of-pocket expenses. And figuring out what part they will pay is far from simple.To illustrate, consider the medical bills “covered” under Part B of Medicare, for a common senior procedure, a knee replacement. Medicare will confirm that a knee replacement is all “covered” by Part B. If you merely accept that language as plain English and assume that you can have the procedure without cost, you are in for a massive set of surprises.”Covered” under Part B means, at best, 80% of the costs are actually paid by Medicare. You pay a monthly premium of $202.90 in 2026 for Part B coverage. Then you pay a deductible, $283 in 2026, upon your first use of Part B benefits in the calendar year. But the biggest surprise of all is that you still have to pay 20% of ALL the Part B charges, plus additional “excess charges” if your doctor elects to bill you for more than Medicare will payWe’ll skip the math shown in the book because a more urgent matter has recently surfaced, but bottom line? You were perfectly “covered” –except for the ~$12,200 CHECK your hip-pocket insurance co. had to write!The more URGENT matter? Believe it or not, the Wizards in D.C. are working hard on a plan to AUTO-ENROLL EVERY new Medicare age-in to the *lowest bid* managed care Medicare Advantage plan available in their county, and LOCK THEM INTO IT FOR THREE YEARS! We must be joking, right? No, not by a long shot. This is how the machinery of Medicare works, quietly, behind the scenes, and then— BANG! We’re trapped. This one is called H.R. 3467, due to take effect Jan. 1, 2028, and Chris Klomp, Medicare Director, speaking for the Trump administration, threw his full support behind the bill on March 20, 2026. Mortimer supports all of this with multiple sources in his Preface.Can you imagine the implications? Lock people into Medicare Advantage, never mind the *lowest bid* plan available, eliminate their right to choose Original Medicare, or Medicare Supplements, the current choice of almost half of Medicare users! But the pols don’t want our choices – they want *their* choice.