Medicare Managed Care Plan Coverage When Traveling

Medicare Part A and Medicare Part B provide the same coverage for your parent wherever she goes in the United States. But that's not necessarily true of a Part C Medicare Advantage managed care plan. So if your parent is enrolled in a Medicare Advantage managed care plan and she regularly spends time away from home -- traveling, staying at a second home, visiting family -- it's a good idea to find out the extent to which she's covered while away by checking the plan's written materials. If she has no coverage during travel under her Part C plan, it's worth investigating whether a comparable plan is available that would give her such coverage. Or she could investigate medigap supplemental insurance, combined with a return to traditional Medicare coverage, as an alternative to managed care.

Also, Medicare provides no coverage while your parent is out of the country. So if she regularly travels abroad, she might want a managed care plan or medigap policy that offers some foreign travel coverage. Alternatively, to cover a specific trip, she can get special short-term coverage from an individual travel health insurance policy issued separately from her regular healthcare coverage.