i'm going to talk about the best medicare supplement plans for 2021 and certainly something
important to understand if you're just coming into medicare maybe you're turning 65 or you're about
to retire your choices when you come into medicare they can be daunting so i'm going to go over
the medicare supplement choices and show you what i would do if i were coming into medicare
and try to make it as simple as we can to understand what our coverage is so
i'm keith armbrick founder of medicare on video and i help people across the country
in all 50 states make the right medicare choices and one of the best parts there's no cost to you
to allow me to help you so hopefully you will allow me to help you and we try to make things
as simple and easy as possible get the best value so we want the best plan at the best price
to make sure that we really don't think about health insurance at all in the future
so that's my goal here and i'm going to go over the medicare supplement choices that you have
so hopefully you'll understand exactly what you're looking at now there's always questions
after a video if you have any questions i'm happy to help with any of it give me a call
send me an email and i will respond and make sure that we get the answers that you need
so i hope you find it pretty helpful and we're going to talk about medicare supplement plans so
what exactly is a medicare supplement plan it is a medigap plan so it's the same exact
thing with two different terminologies medigap is medicare supplement plans and you can see here
medicare.gov says medigap is medicare supplement insurance that helps fill the gaps in original
medicare so when we come onto medicare part a and part b and i certainly have videos that
break down every piece of medicare but part a and part b is what's considered original medicare
and there are deductibles and co-insurance and out-of-pocket expenses that we don't want to pay
so we generally will get a medicare supplement plan that will cover most if not all of those
out-of-pocket expenses so these are the gaps in original medicare so part b
which is your outpatient services so not in the hospital but outside the hospital
covers 80 so you're responsible for 20 and that's not so bad unless you have a catastrophic
event that 20 percent can get out of hand very quickly so we don't want to pay that part a has a
deductible part a deductible right now is 1408 and that's for each time during the year that you go
into the hospital for a different event so you could face that 1400 deductible multiple times
in a single year and again we don't want to pay that that's just not something
that would make your hospital admission any easier part b deductible things that go on outside the
hospital much smaller deductibles so not really also bad it's 198 and it is a one-time deductible
for the entire year so once you've met your 198 for stuff that goes on outside of the hospital
that's it for the year and then you don't have to worry about that then you're paying the 20 percent
that medicare doesn't cover for outpatient services part b co-payments there can be
co-payments if you have a certain type of plan and we'll go through that also
pretty specifically to show you exactly what that is and that can be up to twenty dollars again not
a big out-of-pocket expense so sometimes it makes sense to keep our premium low and have manageable
out of pocket expenses so i'll show you exactly what that means as well and then this one's a
little odd part b excess charges so part b has a piece of it that has excess charges and i'm not
sure why they even allow it but it has to do with a doctor and how they're contracted with medicare
if a doctor accepts medicare assignment then they take what medicare pays them as complete
payment if they do not take assignment so they kind of be considered out of network but you
can still use them medicare will pay their part but then that doctor could also bill you 15 more
than what medicare pays and it's generally not a large amount it kind of sounds more than it is
but again we just need to understand exactly what we're looking at so here's all our choices
on medicare supplement plans there's 10 choices and actually there's 11 choices they hide one up
here with this little asterisk which is a plan ghd and that just changed in 2020 used to be fhd now
it's ghd also makes it a little more confusing so we have these choices here and we really
don't need this many choices i do not know why they saturate it this way to make it confusing but
when we're looking at medicare supplement choices really there's three and we'll even consider the
asterisks as four choices now it's a little bit easier than that plan f if you're coming into
medicare after january 1 2020 so if you turn 65 after january 1 2020 plan f is no longer a choice
and that's actually a good thing because plan f was overpriced it considered 100 coverage on
everything but was also a massive lead increased premium so a lot of people got sold into plan f
and if you're on plan f right now and you're watching this give me a call send me an email
we can likely save you a lot of money and have coverage that's very similar to your plan f so
let's just take plan f off the board right now we're going to look at plan g and plan n and
those are really your two main choices now there are a couple of states where medicare supplements
are handled differently and prices are much higher than they are in the rest of the country
states like new york or connecticut uh sometimes in florida although florida is getting better now
where that asterix plan makes a lot of sense so if you live in a high cost state and again we can go
through that specifically one-on-one with you and show you if it makes sense or not but here we look
at plan g plan g you look right down the list it's got a hundred percent on most of the services so
it covers most of those gaps that we just talked about in part b what it does not cover is the
part b deductible which is the 198 dollars again manageable we can live with 198 dollars
if you're coming off group health right now you probably have a 2 000 deductible or more and so
198 deductible for the year for stuff that goes on outside the hospital not so bad part b excess
charges they are covered under plan g so that's a good thing that we understand the difference
between g and n and i'll show you that in just a minute and then you look down the list also
another good thing about medicare original with a supplement it gives you out of country coverage
where if you look into a medicare advantage plan and i don't generally recommend medicare advantage
plans but they limit you to where you are and there's also no out of country coverage so if
you travel whatsoever it can get very complicated in that scenario so now we look at plan n plan m
pretty similar to plan g with the exception you see here we have some asterisks and wherever
there's asterisks is there are complications so it makes it a little more complicated but what
those asterisks is say is that when you go to the doctor if you have an office visit you can have a
copay of up to twenty dollars so if you have plan n the difference between n and g is on end you
might have a copay of up to twenty dollars when you go to the doctor now why in the world would we
want a twenty dollar copay for when we go to the doctor the only reason is if the premium is that
much less than g that it makes sense and i'll show you where i would draw the line on that as well
and then plan n also does not cover excess charges so it makes it a little bit gray on plan n because
you have to understand the excess charges but the vast majority of doctors take medicare assignment
so there are no excess charges there's a number of states that do not allow excess charges so again
we kind of need to look at it one-on-one with you and figure out if it makes sense or if it
doesn't make sense and then everything else is pretty much full coverage so it's really terrific
coverage with medicare and a medicare supplement so here we have our choices when to choose
medicare supplement plan g so when would i choose plan g i want a full coverage plan
so i pretty much want everything covered except i'm going to have 198 deductibles for the year
not a big deal at all i mean that's absolutely terrific coverage we want an affordable premium
so we want to get that premium and plan g's across the country and again some states are different
than others and i'm not sure why they fluctuate so much in price but it generally can run
right around 100 so it can be 100 to 120 dollars a month for plan g so again not expensive on the
premium side and we have low out of pocket cost so that's absolutely what a manageable premium
low out of pocket cost so that's terrific for plan g now sometimes plan g in certain locations is
too high priced and if it is too high price then we want to look at plan n so plan n very similar
to g where we have full coverage but we have some out of pocket costs we have that co-pay
and we have to think about excess charges but again not such a big deal if the premium is
low enough so when would i choose plan n i would choose plan n if the premium
is 25 or more less than plan g pretty simple for me if plan n is 20
less than plan g i'm buying plan g if it's 10 less i'm definitely buying plan g but if plan n is 30
less than plan g i'm buying plan n because that's going to save me 300 plus a year to have a 20
copay so it makes sense if the premium justifies plan n so gives you a pretty good idea now plan
ghd wiggles its way in here now when we want plan ghd and the premium on this can be
significantly less than 100 so it can be usually around 70 a month so we want a low premium and it
puts a limit on our annual out-of-pocket so it has a much higher deductible that's what the g
the hd stands for is high deductible it's around twenty three hundred dollars twenty four hundred
dollars and these change year to year so but you know why would we want a big deductible they
always want a big deductible is if g and n are outrageously expensive and we want to manage our
premium so we get our premium way down and then we just have a deductible so what it does it gives us
a stop on that 20 percent so we can't have a catastrophic loss if we have a terrible year
so ghd absolutely makes sense in certain locations and again kind of a specific scenario that we need
to talk about and make sure that we understand our choices and then as long as you understand it
whichever one you pick is the right one so as long as we understand and we know what we're into
then it makes a lot of sense so again i'm happy to help with all this or any of it or any piece
of medicare if you have any questions give me a call send me an email and i will absolutely
help if your client if you're not a client i'm happy to help with any of it so
if there's anything that i can do reach out and we'll be happy to get back to you and i hope you
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