Want to ditch your Medicare coverage? You've got 45 options

Good information on where the additional pressure comes in for enrolling in a private fee for service plan...money....and some are complicated to the point to where the physician doesn't understand how they get paid from the other end of the spectrum...BD

Insurance companies are selling seniors on private fee-for-service health plans to replace their Medicare because the plans allow patients to see any doctor they want anywhere in the United States.
Sounds great, except some doctors have never heard of these plans and don't accept them. A private fee-for-service plan is one type of Medicare Advantage plan..
However, the doctor is supposed to agree to your plan's terms and conditions of payment before before each visit. That's where things can get tricky. Not all doctors agree to the terms. And they don't have to accept your plan because unlike with an HMO, the doctor doesn't have a contract with the insurance company.
Of all the types of Medicare Advantage plans available, the private fee-for-service plans afford insurers the highest payments from the Medicare administration — on average 117 percent of what it would pay for a traditional Medicare beneficiary, Hertel said. Insurers have a good incentive to sell private fee-for-service plans.
Some physicians, "when presented with a private fee-for-service plan card, will elect to not see the patient because of their unfamiliarity with how it works and how they'll be paid," he said.