“Medicare should create more PSA's (public service announcements) reminding seniors that inactivity, bad eating habits, etc. leads to poor health and offer an 800# or website for them to visit to learn more about various health topics.

In addition, Medicare has to adopt advances in medicine earlier. For example, we paid $20,000 out of pocket because Medicare determined that non-invasive laser spine surgery was "experimental" and therefore not covered. The providing group the surgery has over 250,000 successful surgeries, so how is this still deemed experimental? Further, from a cost standpoint, a week in the hospital, meals, nursing care, 3+ hours in an O.R. plus 6 months recovery including rehab costs a lot more than $20,000. This is a prime area where costs could be reduced AND the procedure LESS painful to the patient with a quicker recovery time if Medicare would just use some common sense and allow access to some of these newer, more advanced medical procedures.”