My First Elder Hurdle

I have just experienced my initial indoctrination into what for lack of a better term we shall call "the next stage of life" or "senior citizenry" or "old age." In this instance the topic was Medicare. Now a large number of my friends are of age commensurate status and since I was a youngster in college many of them have already passed through this stage of informational overload. I refer, of course, to figuring out which combination of Medicare programs to queue up for as I approached three score and five.

I have just read "Medicare & You: the Official U.S. Government Medicare Handbook." One thing and I mean only one thing is clear at this point, you must live six and a half decades under the bureaucratic system of governance here in the U.S. to be able to fully digest the utter nonsense that is the Medicare program.

Mind you I am not relying solely on this 140+ page government issued pamphlet, no you see for the past three months I have been receiving promotional material from at least eleven different insurance programs that supplement, extend, expand and compliment the "Original Medicare" program or what in the parlance of obscurity are known as "Medicare Advantage Plans."

Fortunately there is one outstanding program available to nearly everyone but it comes with a secret handshake, a decoder ring and 128-character decryption algorithm. But I possess super-insider information which I can share with you this one and only one time. Please do not ask me repeat this anytime in the future for fear of this getting out and ruining the Medicare program for others.

Here it is.

To effectively use the Medicare program, you must remain healthy.