Virginia,

I can speak from personal experience on this. During the past few months it has been necessary to undergo follow up procedures to some rather serious surgery last summer. I look older than I am, and my physicians assuming that I was medicare age indicated to me that the same health care I received under private health insurance would have been available to me under medicare. In fact some procedures that private insurance would not cover were in fact covered by medicare. They had experienced so much trouble with insurance companies either denying coverage or initially granting coverage, but subsequently finding some reason to reneg that I was asked to personally guaranty payment in the event that the insurance carrier renegged. Apparently some patients had found themselves in the position of being informed that a procedure was covered only to find out after the procedure was performed that the insurance carrier had renegged. Had they been informed up front they probably would not have had the procedure performed. It leaves one to question what one does when the procedure is to alleviate a life threatening problem, but is beyond the financial ability of the patient to pay for it. They had not experienced this with medicare.

During the pre op physicals last summer and last month I observed others who were on the medicare system. They were receiving the same Ct scans, MRI's, bone scans, ultra sounds, stess tests and lab work that I was receiving under private insurance. There are doctors in my area that have refused to accept certain types of private health care plans, but gladly accept medicare. Several years ago one of my doctors infomed me that he was having difficulty with a particular insurance carrier, and that I would have to obtain other insurance coverage, or pay the medical expenses myself. He gave me one year's advance warning to obtain other coverage.

You have indicated that you do not have health care coverage. I am assuming that is because of the high cost of private health care insurance. So, I will respectfully ask...is no coverage better than the coverage you would receive under an extension of medicare?