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For the last 7 years, UnitedHealthcare has really not brought anything new to San Diego County, but this year they brought a new plan out called the Walgreens plan. Many of you have had this UnitedHealthcare Sharp plan and if you've gone to your Arch doctors, your Sharp Rees-Stealy doctors, your Sharp Graybill. Well that all comes under this UnitedHealthcare Sharp plan. Well, there's something new that competes this year with it. Really what happened was UnitedHealthcare wanted to come out with a, what they call a zero zero plan. Zero copay to see your primary, zero copay to see your specialist. But actually Medicare would penalize UnitedHealthcare for doing it to the existing plan. But if you created a whole new plan and made the changes there, it's perfectly fine. I think what Medicare is trying to do is give the consumer more options, more choices and ultimately what they ended up doing is making more confusion. So today we're going to kind of walk through it and kind of take some of the sting out of, you know what's the difference between the two plans. Let's go ahead and we'll take a look at it. So, first of all, I want you to reach in your wallet and pull out your UnitedHealthcare card. And just so we're making sure that we're comparing the same plan. So that card should say Sharp in big letters in the top right-hand corner. So if that's the card you have that's the plan you currently have. This is one that I want you to compare against that I think will be a good one for 2021. All right, so both these plans both the Sharp and Walgreens plans ... They're the same name, the same company just one is Sharp, one is Walgreens. And the other part of it is they're both zero premium plans. Which means that there's nothing monthly to have these particular plans to show to your doctor. So think of this insurance, think of this insurance as “pay as you go” insurance. So it really doesn't cost you anything monthly. It's just, when you go to the doctor, you pay as you go. So currently you've been $5 to see your primary doctor and $35 to see a specialist. Well, on the new Walgreens plan copays a little bit different. One of the things I wanted to point out before we get into that is the maximum out of pocket. So what that means is it's not a deductible it's a maximum out-of-pocket. What that means is every time you go to the doctor, you pay a $5 copay, $35 to specialist. You spend a night in the hospital, you pay so much copays. If all of those copays, every time you reach in your pocket reach a certain dollar amount - you don't pay any more copays the rest of the year. So it's, it's a dollar limit of protecting your risk. And so if you go ahead and take a look at it on this particular plan. So the Sharp plan you currently have, it's $3,400 where the Walgreen's plan has a $2,900 max out-of-pocket. So it actually decreases your risk by $500 a month. That's kind of a nice feature to have.
Second thing we want to take a look at is your max out-of-pocket obviously is the better, better plan here but we also want to take a look at primary care visits. So as you can see, the Walgreens plan has a zero copay to see your primary doctor versus a $5 to see the specialist. And also it has a $35 to see your specialist now where the Walgreens plan is zero. So that's what I'm saying it's called the zero zero plan. So zero monthly, zero to see your primary, zero to see a specialist. So yeah, you can't get much better than zero. So between those - between the max out-of-pocket, zero monthly, zero to see your primary, zero to see a specialist. And again, all the same Arch doctors, same Graybill doctor same Sharp Rees-Stealy doctors. They're all the exactly the same network. All right. So it's kind of a nice feature to have. So moving on, let's go ahead and take a look at it. So virtual visits. So they've, they've got into that. So now you can take your cell phone, you know and you can call your doctor and say, doc, the you know, I feel like I have the flu and the doc can order the medicine for you and you don't have to get out of bed. You have somebody down to go get your medicine for you. It's virtual visits they have now. So moving on from there, we can see that inpatient hospitalizations exactly the same - $260 copays for day one through seven. And so in that particular regard day eight, nine, 10, 11 is all zero after that. So if you do the numbers, it works out to around $1,800. So your worst case for you had a terrible car accident you went to the hospital and you spent 30 days in the hospital. You're gonna get charged for the first seven and then everything after that is free. So it works out to be about $1,800, right?

Bridlewood Insurance
13520 Evening Creek Dr N Suite 100,
San Diego, CA 92128
Phone: (858) 753-7000