Class Colloquium 16: Medicare … Advantage?
Editor’s Note: #16 in our series where classmates share their expertise … to help us make better decisions about our lives.
Class Colloquium: Live Presentation, plus Q&A
Every year in late fall, the airways are filled with Medicare ads, promoting senior health insurance and health plan products. You can’t miss them, and they are difficult to ignore!
Which ones, if any, should you consider?
Robert Riehle, MD (and Branford ’69) has been on both sides: as medical director of Aetna (and earlier at Cigna and Blue Shield), Bob knows the ins and out of the payors. And as a surgeon and physician executive, he’s seen how policies (in both senses of that word!) affect quality and patient care. He will be our guide for Class Colloquium 16: Medicare … Advantage?
Medicare and Medicare Advantage
Yes, well-known personalities urge your enrollment in one plan or another, competing for your healthplan premium dollars and loyalty. But what are they promoting and why? What should you do as an informed senior consumer? Should you opt for low deductibles, free or low cost pharmacy benefits, health club memberships? Perhaps you’re attracted to free transportation to medical visits, dental, vision, or hearing benefits.
These “consumer-directed” enhancements are offered as private insurer alternatives to pure Medicare, known categorically as Part C or Medicare Advantage Programs.
Their inclusion as a supplement to traditional Medicare is enticing, but which underlying health-plan provides the ‘Advantage’? Is it truly advantageous ?
Register Now
Don’t forget to register in advance. Go to https://us06web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZEpdu2orTItG9cphHcS52ywCnYlEiSIPSVm and sign up now. You will be emailed instructions for joining the meeting.
About the Speaker: Robert Riehle, MD.
Education:
- Yale ’69, B.S., Psychology
- Columbia ’73, M.D.
Career Summary:
Academic Surgery: Associate Professor of Surgery (Urology), with tenure, at New York Hospital – Cornell Medical Center in New York City; Director of Extracorporeal Shock Wave Lithotripsy; author of 50 scientific articles, including a medical monograph and films on lithotripsy.
Physician executive: numerous facility and health plan medical directorships; Chief Medical Officer of a tertiary teaching healthcare delivery system; Medical Director of a 450,000 member corporate employee health plan.
Career Detail:
See LinkedIn
Interests:
Author of 50 published clinical papers.
Performing arts boards (symphony and dance), film and theatre, international travel, literary arts (writing and literature discussion groups), collector of leather-bound books, bookends, fountain pens, and artisan masks.
We hope you can attend. Don’t forget to register and mark your calendars.