Medicare and company medical

[TheSkipper]

What is the name of your state? Massachusetts
My mother-in-law will soon need to go to a nursing home that deals with re-hab patients. She had a strock 2 weeks ago and is ready to be transfered from the hospital to the nursing home. She has Medicare and a private insureance through the trucking company her husband works for. The nursing home is telling my wife that as long as they have the private insurance, Medicare won't pay anything!! Yet, the private insureance is only going to cover very little of the physical therepy she needs. I thought the way it works is that Medicare picks up what the private insurance doesn't. The nursing home insist that Medicare won't pay for anything as long as they have that other insurance. She said many people are fooled into believing that having Medicare and picking up a supplemental insurance is the way to go, but it's not.
Can anyone help with this?? It's holding up getting my mother-in-law transfered.
Thanks.

 

[cbg]

I can never remember which way it goes, but the size of the company determines whether the company pays first or Medicare pays first. In your case it seems that the company pays first.

It is probably overstating the case to say that Medicare won't pay ANYTHING. It is not true, however, that they will pay anything that your private insurance won't. In general, the secondary carrier, whichever it might be, pays the difference between what they would have paid if they were primary, and what the primary carrier paid.

In any case, you shouldn't be getting your benefits information from a nursing home. Talk to Medicare directly, and/or to your father in law's human resources department. The nursing home can only give you very general information; Medicare and the HR department can give you specific information on the plans your mother in law is covered under.