I sure am glad that glad that President Obama’s health care initiative has reduced health care costs.  Yesterday we received our renewal information from Humana for our Medicare Advantage plan for 2012 and found that the monthly premium for each of us will increase from $139.00 per month to $174.00 per month!  A smooth 25% increase!  This is, of course, in addition to our Medicare Part B premiums.  As we spend part of the year in different states, traditional HMO/PPO offerings will not work for us – they are specific to a geographical area and you cannot have two plans in the same year.  There are offerings from other carriers, but when I investigated those last year I found that our providers did not accept the coverage.  Talk about the classic no-win situation.

After 2 years with no COLA increase in Social Security Benefits, it appears that any small COLA increase in 2012 will be eaten up by an increase in the Part B premium.  I find it amusing and more than a little disingenuous that when calculating the cost of living food and energy are excluded.  Think about it, are those not the two largest components of our variable costs?  There is do doubt that something has to be done with Social Security – I refuse to call Social Security an entitlement given that for many of us rather than an entitlement it is a bad investment – you can see my further amplification on this in a previous post here. However, it needs to be done in the context of an overall revamp of our tax and other programs, not by a continuing elimination of COLA increases.

So once again this year I will make a journey through the mirad of options and more than likely end up where I started – with a 25% increase in our health care insurance costs.