The free food come on

Some Medigap providers invite you to a meal - a FREE meal! Why? Because few turn down free meals. But with the food comes a sales pitch.

You can eat the food and say NO - not interested. Or say "let me take the information home and study it." If you feel pressured by the sales people to sign up right there and then - it's a good chance they are working on a commission and do not really care about you except as part of their commission check!

High pressure sales tactics are not unheard of - several insurers got in trouble due to this a while back. If any sales person tells you that you must sign up for their insurance immediately because it's a limited time offer - RUN the other way! You have a few months in which to make the decision...and it's one that you want to think about.

Changing insurers may mean you need to switch physicians and you'll want to think about that. You'll need to check each plan in which you might have interest and see if your current providers are part of the new plan. You'll also want to compare out of pocket costs like co-payments, daily hospital rates and the maximum you must pay before the insurance kicks in.

I got a "blurb" in the mail yesterday that said it starts at $0. [There are a few of these.] So I went online to find out more about this because I was not about to call them and talk to a sales person. For starters even tho I am web savvy - the site was not easy to negotiate and for many of the questions I had - I needed to open a .pdf file.

So I decided to stop looking at that insurance for now because it seemed to me the goal of the site was to get me to call or go to a meeting - which is exactly what I was trying to NOT do!