A lot of people like the advantage program. Obviously I’ve got 15 years before I am eligible for Medicare but I see a lot of people using their benefits at the grocery store. Some get $125 a month for groceries. I’m afraid the barn doors open and everybody ran out. It would be interesting to see how seniors would react if somebody proposed banning advantage programs.

What am I missing?

Honestly, I'm tired of the constant trashing of Advantage plans I see here. Please spell out EXACTLY how I'd be better off with whatever the alternative is (and what exactly is that alternative, since it's never spelled out) than the Advantage Plan.

Because regular Medicare is very limited in what it covers.

Again, I've had my Advantage Plan since the beginning, nearly 10 years now, and it has done me well, including through hospitalization for a heart attack. A huge bill (around $80k) for which I owed under $1,000. My meds and my doctor visit are likewise very inexpensive.

I'm likewise reminded of how people here trash annuities, as if they are all totally and completely bad. Nope. I have two, that my wonderful financial advisor got me into about a decade ago. I am collecting from them now. If I die before I actually use up all I spent on them (which is highly likely) the remainder will go to my beneficiary. Remind me exactly what is wrong with that?

Glad yours has worked well for you!

I honestly have no idea what effect advantage plans have on that large amorphous body known as "the taxpayers," and I will admit that as my husband approaches retirement, I know he and I are, OF NECESSITY, going to have to make a decision based on what is most financially effective for US, personally.

And when I say "of necessity," I mean exactly that. Our income is going to shrink, a lot, and we will have to make every dollar of that income go as far as possible. If my concerns seem selfish to anyone else, all I can say is sorry, not sorry. I'm talking about survival here. We admittedly did not do as good of a job saving for retirement as we ideally should have, for a variety of reasons, not all of which have been under our control. And our time machine is broken, so there's nothing we can do about that now.

Every time I've seen a thread about Medicare Advantage plans here at DU, it seems to be full of posts about how terrible these plans are AND posts about how wonderful they are. The comments in some of these threads swing so wildly from one extreme to another that reading them is enough to give a person whiplash, and I invariably end up feeling more confused when I'm done than I was before I started.

What I would say to you or anyone else who has a plan that you feel is working well for you is this: if it ain't broke, don't fix it. 😉

For those of us who still have to choose a plan (both the type of plan and the specific one), I don't know what the answer is. All I know is that I'm scared to death of making the wrong choice and being out more money than we can afford. And reading the threads on DU about this stuff (the ones I've seen so far anyway) hasn't been much help.

Owned by Boston Globe.
Don't know what axe they have to grind.

We have Medicare Advantage and it's saving us LOTS of money. Thousands.

If it's 'harming' Medicare trust fund then they need to fix it.
Don't ask me to pay thousands more when I can avoid it.

It seems that someone is earning a ton of commissions pushing these plans. My own advisor recommended against these plans and I trust him.

These plans are raping the Medicare fund.

I really do not trust the people making these calls. It is clear that they are in boiler rooms where a ton a calls are being places