[fintstone]

My wife has been on Medicare for a while and we kept our other Federally subsidized insurance coverage (from Fed employment/retirement) which requires that we also have Medicare once eligible. The cost for both comes out to around $1000 a month for each of us...so about $24K per year.

Now, all the decent medical providers in my area have decided that Medicare does not pay enough...so to get around that, they have gone to "concierge practices." Under this, they take Medicare, but you have to be signed up for their concierge services (same as normal services before except, they say they can talk to you longer than the few seconds they once allotted) and that costs an additional $100+ a month...which pushes it up another $2400 a year to about $26,400 total for two very heathy folks...just in case we get sick. I go to the doctor about once every 10 years (except for colonoscopy which is every 5).

My wife and I also have Tricare (retired military) which was promised to provide lifetime free care...but it also requires that we each have the expensive Medicare at $560.50 a month each...so not much relief there.