FMCA PPO plan

[OregonJim]

2 hours ago, Barbaraok said:

OregonJim,

If you are worried about domicile in connection with wills or probate, there are legal ways to make sure that isn't a problem.   Not sure what "jurisdiction of authority" you are worried about - could you please explain that one.   

A lot of people seem to be chasing the "I need an exact definition that is good in all jurisdictions" and never explain why.  More often than not it appears to be tilting at a windmill.  

Jurisdiction of authority meaning which state's law(s) are interpreted when involved in any legal matter while travelling.  

Wanting to be forearmed with knowledge before investing in a potentially costly venture is not "tilting at windmills".

[Barbaraok]

53 minutes ago, OregonJim said:

Jurisdiction of authority meaning which state's law(s) are interpreted when involved in any legal matter while travelling.  

Wanting to be forearmed with knowledge before investing in a potentially costly venture is not "tilting at windmills".

10s of thousands of fulltimers have been doing this for decades.   Problems that people have had have generally revolved around states with income tax wanting to still claim someone after they have 'moved', laws governing common law marriages, wills/probate issues, and voting.  Most of these have been worked out either by the person(couple) choosing a different state for their domicile, or a group working to get things changed (as in voting for Escapee members).  So, if you think there might be a particular problem, ask the question - you might be surprised that it has already been researched and solved by others.  

[FL-JOE]

20 hours ago, Barbaraok said:

Joe,

One of the reasons that mail forwarding services can be so helpful is that they are often located in smaller communities where local officials come to understand that a segment of their population will never actually be in town, but will instead keep people in that town working.  That is important for things like voting and jury duty, buying a new vehicle out-of-state and getting it registered, etc.    

So I guess I am confused.  A mail forwarding service is a business.  They are in business to make money just like any business that want to keep their doors open.  I hate to break this to you, but your "friends" at the mail service are making money off you.   So if you claim your domicile and home address is some mail service in a small SD town you are doing a good thing because you are helping people in that town feed their families?  

How is having a mail service better for voting, jury duty, and buying/registering a new vehicle out of state?  

[Kirk W]

9 hours ago, OregonJim said:

Jurisdiction of authority meaning which state's law(s) are interpreted when involved in any legal matter while travelling.  

At any given moment in time, you need to deal with the laws of the state you are presently in and the one where the issue is rooted. For example, if you are thinking of a will, the state your will was written in & one where the willed property is located. Your driving related issues fall between your location and your state of registration and licensing. While challenges of domicile are rare, they can be very complicated if they should happen. That is the reason that so many experts advise one to move as much as reasonably possible to the place you intend to use as your domicile. A visitor does not normally have issues over domicile with a state they are visiting unless they stay beyond some period of time spelled out by that state's laws (typically 6 mo.) or if they accept employment in a permanent position within that governmental jurisdiction. Even then the issue isn't usually heavily enforced unless there is some reason that the local area has problems with their laws being ignored. 

I think that you are over-thinking this entire issue if you plan to be a fulltimer and move around. Don't let those who wish to argue over small details make this more difficult than it needs to be. I have participated in various parts of the full-time RV community by observation of friends, by internet forums, by reading magazines, by living the life, and several other ways since we first learned about the lifestyle back in the early 80's. In all of those years, I have only had contact with two people who ever experienced domicile issues. I also did a great deal of research about the question in an effort to write an article on domicile for Escapee Magazine about 10 years ago and found fewer than a dozen court cases. Just follow the advice of articles like The Ten Commandments of Texas Domicile, and then relax and enjoy your experience. There is much greater risk that you will be hit by a truck while going to the grocery store than that you will have a  domicile related problem if you take even minimal steps to establish your new one. 

[mkc]

Can folks please take the domicile/residence discussion over to one of the Fulltiming boards?  This topic has lost focus on the pre-Medicare age medical insurance issue that is the subject of the original post and initial discussion.

 

Thanks

[Blues]

13 hours ago, FL-JOE said:

Any account we have is paperless and/or auto pay.  Any piece of mail that is "unknown" we have her open it. 

You're assuming that every piece of mail that is sent to you gets put into your "informed delivery" list, and will show up as either a scan of the envelope or a message that no scan is available.  I haven't ever tried to match up everything that was actually delivered to a corresponding notice in my informed delivery list, but it wouldn't surprise me one bit if things slip through.

So there could be a piece of mail that you don't know about, but your friend would assume you saw it in your informed delivery list and don't want her to open it.  So you don't know it's there and she doesn't open it, and that could be a problem if it's something important.

That's why I wouldn't trust it completely.  In my case, I have my friend keep everything and forward everything every few months, so I eventually do see everything that comes, just as a failsafe.  But I have a subscription to a weekly magazine, so there's always something to send (in a heavy flat-rate box), and the few pieces of mail come along for the ride.

 

Quote

We can absolutely see what mail she is getting.  So can the 12 or 15 other people that have handled that envelope before it gets to her mailbox.  We don't pay any attention to it if our names are not on it.  We have known her for over 40 years, she was our neighbor when we were raising all our kids.  There is nothing that would come in our mail that I would want to keep secret or be ashamed of and I'm sure she is the same way.  

That's fine.  But I think it's something that should be divulged to whoever's doing your mail.  They may not care, but I don't think it'll ever be the case that they wouldn't want to have a heads-up about it when discussing the arrangement. 

[2gypsies]

8 hours ago, mkc said:

Can folks please take the domicile/residence discussion over to one of the Fulltiming boards?  This topic has lost focus on the pre-Medicare age medical insurance issue that is the subject of the original post and initial discussion.

 

Thanks

Here are good detailed posts on ACA insurance for full-timers by this blogger. She also did more the past year so do a search on her blog.  They recently 'moved' to France for a while but she is still trying to help RVers with this issue.

https://wheelingit.us/?s=aca+medical+insurance

[FL-JOE]

20 hours ago, Blues said:

You're assuming that every piece of mail that is sent to you gets put into your "informed delivery" list, and will show up as either a scan of the envelope or a message that no scan is available.  I haven't ever tried to match up everything that was actually delivered to a corresponding notice in my informed delivery list, but it wouldn't surprise me one bit if things slip through.

So there could be a piece of mail that you don't know about, but your friend would assume you saw it in your informed delivery list and don't want her to open it.  So you don't know it's there and she doesn't open it, and that could be a problem if it's something important.

That's why I wouldn't trust it completely.  In my case, I have my friend keep everything and forward everything every few months, so I eventually do see everything that comes, just as a failsafe.  But I have a subscription to a weekly magazine, so there's always something to send (in a heavy flat-rate box), and the few pieces of mail come along for the ride.

 

That's fine.  But I think it's something that should be divulged to whoever's doing your mail.  They may not care, but I don't think it'll ever be the case that they wouldn't want to have a heads-up about it when discussing the arrangement. 

Guess I didn't go into enough specific detail.  Of course we have her forward a bulk package to us every so often.  There are certain things during the year that only come in the mail that we want to receive, for example a couple different membership packets to different organizations, some mags, etc.   Probably the longest we have gone without having her send us a package has been 6 weeks this year.  

We have had informed delivery for some time now so we are aware that everything does not show up on scan.  Also, some things may show up and then not be delivered until the next day.

[Blues]

 

 

On 11/11/2018 at 7:07 AM, FL-JOE said:

We have had informed delivery for some time now so we are aware that everything does not show up on scan.  Also, some things may show up and then not be delivered until the next day.

But what you said was, "The USPS now has a free option you can sign up for where you can go online and view what pieces of mail will be delivered to your home each and every day."  I was pointing out, and you apparently agree, that you can't actually view what pieces of mail will be delivered each and every day because not everything gets a scan.

And you might think, "Of course it's not perfect."  But it happens often enough that they have a special email that they send you telling you something got scanned but they don't have an image to show you, and of course there's no way to know if a piece just slipped through entirely.

In fact, a piece that didn't show up in my Informed Delivery account was from Blue Cross about 2019 coverage.  What I don't know is if it was one of the ones that I got an email that said it didn't get scanned, or if it just slipped through unnoticed.  Either way, if I were relying on Informed Delivery, I wouldn't know it had come.

It's kind of like telling a friend that you'll be able to see his mail the same as you see yours, if he lets you use his address.  Best to divulge it so there are no surprises.  And best to let people know that Informed Delivery can't be relied upon.  Then let everybody make their own informed decisions.

 

[KHenson]

I think this topic got a little off-course from the the OP's original question. I have created a page on our site that gives all of the details of the FMCA plan and I even compare it to our new (better) fixed-benefit plan from UnitedHealthcare. 

click here to see the details and compare the FMCA plan vs UnitedHealthcare plan

[Blues]

Sigh.  No mention anywhere on that page that the products being offered/compared are not major medical insurance.

[KHenson]

1 hour ago, Blues said:

Sigh.  No mention anywhere on that page that the products being offered/compared are not major medical insurance.

What is "major medical insurance"?

Ask 10 people that question and you will get 10 different answers. I can't tell you how many emails I get where folks are asking for health insurance like this: 'I don't need coverage for everything, don't want Obamacare, all I am really looking for is major medical'.

Many people think 'major medical' means catastrophic coverage. 

I know what you mean by 'major medical' but the term has evolved over the years, specifically since the implementation of the ACA. 'Major Medical' today is generally synonymous with ACA coverage.

Given that definition, I make it clear on my site that these are fixed-benefit plans and are not ACA coverage. I do actually differentiate them from 'major medical' as well on another page where I go into more detail about our fixed-benefit plan. 

Furthermore, these plans almost always involve a pre-enrollment conversation with us where we go over the plan details and make it very clear that these are not major medical plans. 

I've yet to speak with anyone about a fixed-benefit plan who is under the impression these are major medical plans.

 

[Zulu]

18 hours ago, KHenson said:

What is "major medical insurance"?

Ask 10 people that question and you will get 10 different answers.

That doesn't mean that there isn't an answer.

 

18 hours ago, KHenson said:

I've yet to speak with anyone about a fixed-benefit plan who is under the impression these are major medical plans.

I'm guessing that many of those same people don't know what a fixed-benefit plan is either.

 

x2 on blues Sigh.

It's been several years since the ACA has been out and there are still at least several states that have nationwide PPO plans. But will Escapees go to any effort to investigate these? Oh, right, these plans are not in SD, TX or FL.

[Daveh]

I don't want to have too much of a pile on so I will say this is an improvement. However, as Zulu said the fact that this is a complicated subject should not prevent Escapees from attempting to explain. 

[Blues]

19 hours ago, KHenson said:

Given that definition, I make it clear on my site that these are fixed-benefit plans and are not ACA coverage.

I don't see anywhere on the page you linked to that it says the plans described/compared are not ACA coverage.  Fixed benefit, yes, although I'll suggest that probably a lot of people don't know what that means, and might actually be attracted to it because they think since it's "fixed," they're not going to get stuck with scary things they've vaguely heard about like balance billing.  Or they think a fixed benefit is better than a coinsurance amount expressed in a percentage because of the certainty.

There's awareness developing that an "indemnity" plan isn't health insurance as most people understand it; I hope "fixed benefit" develops a similar reputation, so people will understand from the get-go that what they're looking at is not health insurance as most people understand it.

But anyway, can you point to where it says they're not ACA coverage?

And it's really not that complicated.  You have major medical insurance as most people understand it--health insurance for which you pay a premium and the insurance company pays benefits to the provider, subject to the insured's deductible.  And you have everything else, none of which is major medical insurance as most people understand it, and it should be clearly labeled as "not major medical insurance." 

In the "not major medical insurance" category is fixed benefit/indemnity plans, which I'm gathering were designed as a supplement to major medical insurance--providing payments that will help people cover a high deductible, or to compensate people who lose income because they are sick and can't work.  I saw some marketing materials that were targeted at doctors and other high-income earners, who could use the fixed benefit/indemnity payments as replacement income if they're unable to work because of illness.  To me, a plan that is marketed to high-income earners would need some explaining to be considered what the average person needs/wants when it comes to health insurance.

[KHenson]

26 minutes ago, Blues said:

 

But anyway, can you point to where it says they're not ACA coverage?

 

right here under the quoting banner: http://www.rverinsurance.com/fixed-benefit-medical-for-rvers/

[KHenson]

27 minutes ago, Blues said:

And it's really not that complicated.  You have major medical insurance as most people understand it--health insurance for which you pay a premium and the insurance company pays benefits to the provider, subject to the insured's deductible.  And you have everything else, none of which is major medical insurance as most people understand it, and it should be clearly labeled as "not major medical insurance." 

I understand you don't think it's complicated but many folks do. Which is why we have a conversation before people enroll. A website or blog does not replace that conversation. 

[KHenson]

[Blues]

5 hours ago, KHenson said:

Quote

But anyway, can you point to where it says they're not ACA coverage?

right here under the quoting banner: http://www.rverinsurance.com/fixed-benefit-medical-for-rvers/

I was referring to this link that you posted:

On 12/31/2018 at 12:30 PM, KHenson said:

I think this topic got a little off-course from the the OP's original question. I have created a page on our site that gives all of the details of the FMCA plan and I even compare it to our new (better) fixed-benefit plan from UnitedHealthcare. 

click here to see the details and compare the FMCA plan vs UnitedHealthcare plan

There's a lot of information about how your plan is better than FMCA's, but I still don't see anything that says that no plan on that page is major medical insurance, and I do think that would be one of "all of the details" of the plans.

[KHenson]

6 minutes ago, Blues said:

I was referring to this link that you posted:

There's a lot of information about how your plan is better than FMCA's, but I still don't see anything that says that no plan on that page is major medical insurance, and I do think that would be one of "all of the details" of the plans.

Come on Blues, check the pages again please. It's the same notice at the top of the page in yellow on both pages. And I do in fact include all of the details for both plans with links to the actual plan documents. 

[Blues]

20 hours ago, KHenson said:

Come on Blues, check the pages again please. It's the same notice at the top of the page in yellow on both pages. And I do in fact include all of the details for both plans with links to the actual plan documents. 

The honest thing to do would be to say, "You know what?  Y'all have a point and I'll add language explaining that the plans on that site aren't major medical insurance."  You could even have added something about how you try to be on the up-and-up with people and not mislead them, and that feedback like ours helps you do your job better.

Instead, you chose to change the website and then say, "Come on Blues, check the pages again please."

How do I know this?  Because I have a screenshot of the site as it looked when you originally posted the link (apparently decades of dealing with salesmen has taught me something), and that notice was not there. 

I'm assuming you did it this way to make me look like I don't know what I'm talking about.  I'm disappointed, but I can't say I'm surprised.  Regardless, I'll leave it to others to judge our respective credibility and trustworthiness. 

I'll attach the screenshots in separate posts, due to size limitations.

[Blues]

Here's what the website looked like before it was changed.

[Blues]

Here's what the website looks like after it was changed, with a new yellow box that wasn't there before.

[KHenson]

You are mistaken Blues. I posted that yellow notice before your comment about you not seeing it there. Yes I added it after you all asked me to but before you remarked it wasnt there. 

Do you have a timestamps for those screenshots? Furthermore keep in mind computers cache webpages so it may not have shown on yours until hours afterwards. 

Please be more careful before publicly attacking someone's honesty. In this case you are wrong. 

The proof is right there in my 3:05 post yesterday. It was there before you said it wasnt. 

[KHenson]

Furthermore to be clear, that info was always there on this page: http://www.rverinsurance.com/fixed-benefit-medical-for-rvers/ from day 1. I added the yellow box notice at the top to make it even more obvious but it was always in the text under the banner like I said at 4:24 Tuesday and 1:04 Wednesday.  Except now it's on there twice. It's also in all materials and I point it out in every conversation. 

On this page http://www.rverinsurance.com/fmca-health-insurance-for-rvers/ I added it later; but when you said it wasnt there Wed it was as you can see from my 3:05 screenshot. So that's when I replied, "Come on Blues check the pages again please" because you either hadn't or your computer cached the previous version.