Protect Medicare Advantage

For more than 18 million people in the United States and over 380,000 here in Wisconsin, Medicare Advantage is their choice to meet their health care needs. But my path to loving Medicare Advantage was a bit different than most. While most people would picture a senior citizen when they hear Medicare, I was not a senior citizen when I first become eligible. Instead I was disabled by a disease that could have easily have driven my husband and me into bankruptcy - multiple sclerosis.

My husband and I worked hard and were blessed with a good life. A fitness fanatic, I taught fitness classes, ran in distance races and enjoyed triathlons. I never even considered a health issue would impact our lives.

Then I was diagnosed with MS in 1990. I was lucky to have a husband with health insurance through his employer. But then the great recession hit. My husband lost his job and I turned to Medicare for help. But with tens of thousands of dollars in medications, treatments and care, I needed something more, so I turned to a Medicare Advantage plan.

The decision has been a lifesaver for both my health and my finances. Medicare Advantage covers my preventive care like vaccines, covers my Silvers Sneakers membership, and routinely checks on my well-being to ensure that my health situation is being managed. My Medicare Advantage plan makes me feel that they care about my health just as much as I do.

On February 22nd of this year, myself and five other Medicare Advantage members from Wisconsin had the opportunity to share our health care stories with a member of Sen. Tammy Baldwin's staff. While we were a diverse group at various stages of life, we all had a common story when it came to Medicare Advantage. We all love the preventive care, the choices we are given in the doctors we see or health care facilities we can use and the fact that our plans had low out-of-pocket costs and caps on annual expenses. I heard that while Medicare Advantage was a financial lifesaver for me, it was also a financial lifesaver for the others in the meeting.

More than 380,000 Wisconsinites rely on Medicare Advantage. Thirty-seven percent have incomes under $20,000 and 55 percent of the enrollees are women. Most impressively, 90 percent of beneficiaries are satisfied with their plans. We hope that those statistics, along with our personal stories, will help Senator Baldwin to become a champion in support of Medicare Advantage. We need her, and all of our representatives in Washington, to understand just how important Medicare Advantage is to so many of us.

Important decisions are being made in Washington on the future of health care. To me, and many others, nothing is more important than protecting the incredibly successful Medicare Advantage program.

(Jennifer Fell is a resident of Oconomowoc and a member of the Coalition for Medicare Choices.)