This article relates to 2011 AARP branded Medicare Products. Click this link for information about 2012 Medicare Products.
United Healthcare has made some minor changes to their current suite of AARP branded Medicare Complete plans for 2011. They have also added new plans in some counties in order to better accommodate potential Healthnet members who will need to move to a new plan for January 1, 2011.
The AARP Medicare Complete RPPO $0 premium plan will essentially stay the same for 2011. The plan still features $0 monthly premium and is set up in the same manner as last year. The Inpatient hospital copay has been changed to $320 a day for 5 days vs. $275 a day for 6 days last year. The Rx benefit copays have increases slightly to $6.00, $45.00 and $85.00. As a result, there should still be strong migration into this plan with the relatively small benefit changes.
In most counties there has also been the addition of a $119.00 HMO option that looks to be geared toward catching Medicare enrollment leaving Healthnet Ruby 1 and Ruby 3. It is not likely that the new HMO plan be overly appealing to Ruby enrollees as the benefit structure does not look strong. It will be interesting to see if the new $119.00 option still only covers outpatient surgery and major radiology at 80%.