This is a warning about medical coverage. If your aviation policy has a
small medical incidentals coverage and it is brought into play, you can
have SIGNIFICANT difficulties with Medicare if the latter is your primary
medical coverage. The arrogance inside the Medicare system is
unbelievable; they refused to look at facts, refused to look at simple
arithmetic, refused to accept evidence from AIG, and from my hospital
financial director, who supported my case. After two years of delaying
tactics, they finally met PART of their obligation after a second
intervention by my congressman's office. They allowed no recourse,
handed the case off to a different person at every juncture, split the
records up between two offices in two different states (and the offices
would not share records with each other). Their telephone counselors
would not give their surnames, nor the names of their supervisors, nor
allow supervisors to be addressed. I was told I could not have a personal
hearing or meet with any of their personnel -- even after one of them, God
bless her heart, said that I was on the hook because someone there "had
not done their job," and that the case should never have come up.

Fortunately for me, my secondary insurance picked up the remainder of the
bills, but they could not be called upon until the Medicare case was
closed.

I have lots more to say and I could turn this into a real rant, but I
think I'd better stop.

At 14:08 04 November 2008, rlovinggood wrote:
I used to insure with Avemco, but now, I go through Costello, for both
glider and trailer. They were cheaper than Avemco. However, when I
did ding my glider about 13 or 14 years ago, Avemco was VERY easy to
work with on getting the glider fixed.

I haven't dinged my glider since and haven't had a chance to
personally see how Costello works with personal claims, but our club
has suffered some damage to club ships and Costello was VERY easy to
work with on straightening things out. I would imagine Costello would
work claims for individuals as easily as they did with our club.

Ray Lovinggood
Carrboro, North Carolina, USA