welcome to medicare mini course day two so we're gonna break this down into pieces
because it's obviously a lot of information to take in so we're gonna go bit by bit i'm keith
armbrack founder of medicare on video and i help people across the country make the right medicare
choices i can absolutely help you we're going to figure this out piece by piece so right now
we're going to talk about the cost of medicare and a lot of people go well cost why i've been
paying for it all my life why is there a cost to medicare well there are absolutely out of pocket
expenses involved with medicare and we're going to go through that right now and as i said before you
can find this information together on my website at medicareonvideo.com forward slash mini dash
course it'll bring you right there you can utilize it at your convenience and go through it piece
by piece whenever you need to so let's talk about the costs of medicare and part a hospital coverage
part b outpatient coverage so we're going to go through it exactly and figure out
what our expenses will be as we use our medicare so medicare part a as you recall is stuff that
happens inside the hospital and when we talk about a monthly premium does it cost something monthly
to have medicare part a and for most people the answer is no so if you've worked for a minimum of
40 quarters over your lifetime which is 10 years you've been paying your fica you've been paying
your medicare tax if you've worked for that amount of time or more there is no premium for medicare
part a now if you have only worked for 30 to 39 quarters over your lifetime paying into medicare
then there is a premium that's 259 dollars a month and then for those that are eligible for medicare
but have not contributed over their lifetime through their payroll deductions then that
premium gets expensive it's 471 dollars a month for medicare so you can see basically
if you've been working and paying over your lifetime it's really equating to a savings of
471 dollars a month on your medicare part a so that is what we expect coming into medicare
now what we don't necessarily expect is when we get admitted into a hospital so when you
get admitted into a hospital medicare part a has its own deductible and right now that deductible
is fourteen hundred and eighty four dollars pretty big deductible going into the hospital
and that is if you are admitted into the hospital and it is per benefit period so it can happen
multiple times during the year that benefit period window is 60 days so in other words if you're
admitted to the hospital for a certain condition and then you're released from the hospital
you've paid your deductible while you're in and then if you go back into the hospital 61 days
or more even if it's for the same condition that deductible is going to apply again 1484.
so obviously a big deductible now there are easy ways to cover that deductible medicare supplements
almost all cover that deductible completely so there's almost no out-of-pocket deductible cost if
you have original medicare with a supplement we'll get into that a little bit later so don't let
that kind of scare you too much but it is a big number to be aware of now how the hospital stay
works and again this is if you are admitted into a hospital if you're in patient care in the hospital
day one through 60 under part a there is no cost outside of that deductible and again a medicare
supplement plan can cover that deductible day 61 to 90 jumps up pretty big so 371 dollars per
day if you're in the hospital more than 60 days that wouldn't be a good situation to
be in to be in the hospital that long and then all of a sudden you got a big
per day bill day 91 to 50 goes all the way up to 742 dollars a day in the hospital out of pocket
and again medicare supplements generally cover all that so if you have a medicare supplement plan
there's really going to be almost no out-of-pocket deductible or co-insurance in the hospital now
if you're admitted from the hospital so if you had an inpatient stay in the hospital and they
admit you then into a skilled nursing facility for rehab then medicare part a is going to cover
that medicare part a does not cover long-term care doesn't cover skilled nursing unless you've been
impatient in the hospital and then admitted into a skilled nursing for rehab
day one through 20 there's going to be no out-of-pocket costs day 21 to 100 it's 185.50
per day day 100 plus no coverage so again a medicare supplement plan can cover that up to
100 day part but after 100 days it's considered long-term care and medicare is not designed to
cover long-term care so certainly important to understand that we don't want those long stays
in the hospital or the nursing home but if we do then we need to understand exactly how to maximize
the value and limit our out-of-pocket expense and again this is what we help with so if you have any
questions with that just give me a call send me an email and if you find this helpful super helpful
to me to just leave a comment of any kind below the video because that's what propels it to get it
in front of more people so if you leave a comment below i'll respond personally and then we can have
more people understand exactly what they need to know about their medicare so let's talk about
medicare part b premium for medicare part b there is a premium for medicare part b so it's monthly
of 148 dollars and 50 cents right now in 2021. those numbers generally i mean they always go up
they never go down but they don't go up a lot but they usually go up three four five bucks a year
when they change it but we don't know till the end of the year when they tell us and
then here you can see an asterisk and i don't like asterisks's it says for most people so that 148.50
is for most people assuming you don't have larger than normal income so medicare part b premium
is income based so i'll show you a chart here on the next page if you are making currently
at the time you're going into medicare really at any time
while you're in medicare if you're filing your taxes individually and you make less than eighty
eight thousand dollars a year or if you're filing jointly and you make less than 176 dollars a year
then that is going to be your premium 148.50 you can look down the chart
and see where you might fit in on where your premium would increase if you make more than that
minimum number and you know it's tough to say and a lot of people get really confused with this and
it makes it complicated but you can see if you make significant income if you make more than 500
and you're filing individually or 750 jointly your premium is going to jump all the way to
504 a month for your medicare part b premium now how they look at this it's called irma
and they only have access to information from about two years ago so they're looking
back at your most recent tax return that they have access to which is about two years ago so
your income could be two years ago more than that minimum number and it's not now so if that's
the case you have to file an appeal and it's not that complicated i have all the information on my
website under guides and forms the irma form how to appeal it the brochure all that stuff so makes
it easier for you to figure out exactly how to do that so again give me a call i'll help you walk
right through it and we'll make sure that we don't pay more for our medicare part b than we want to
then we move to when we use medicare part b so if you go to the doctor the outpatient clinic medical
durable equipment whatever it may be outside the hospital there's an annual deductible on medicare
part b right now it's 203 dollars per year and again that's from january to january so not a big
deductible so that's something that's manageable out of pocket and generally you'll have a medicare
supplement that'll cover most stuff but won't cover this 203 dollars and a lot of times that
might be your only out of pocket expense for the year so again manageable in that regard and then
when you look at co-insurance for medicare part b so you go you go to the doctor you're going to be
responsible for that first 203 dollars and then the way medicare works is it's 80 20. so medicare
is going to cover 80 percent of the cost you're going to be responsible for 20 percent of the
cost so if that doctor visit is a hundred bucks after your deductible is gone let's assume you
already did that before medicare is going to pay 80 you're going to be responsible for 20.
now medicare supplements a lot of times cover the 20 percent so again we can package it together so
your out-of-pocket expense really is not much so it makes it easy to use and understand and it's
actually very good medicare is terrific coverage generally much better what you've had as employer
coverage before individuals certainly coverage before medicare is a big improvement and usually
significantly less out of pocket so we just want to make sure that we do our best to get the best
value out of it so part a and part b premiums deductibles and coinsurance that's kind of what
you got to understand and we just went through all that and again if you have questions send
me an email but please leave a comment below the video i i try to ask i don't want to beg but it's
certainly helpful to me to get the information out and i hope you find this all helpful
and that will conclude day two of our medicare mini course so i do hope you find it helpful
and look for the other courses i'd be happy to help with any information have a fantastic day
you