if you're coming into medicare you know by now there are a lot of choices that you need
to make and one of those choices is whether or not you need a medicare supplement plan
some will go through right now exactly what a medicare supplement plan does and we're going to
figure out whether or not you need to have one so stay with me i'm keith arnbrecht founder of
medicare on video and i help people across the country make the right medicare choices and i
can absolutely help you as well best part about it there's no cost to you to allow me to help
you so hopefully you'll take advantage of all my information and we'll make sure we get your pieces
all in the right places after the video if you still have questions feel free to send me an email
give me a call i'm happy to help with any of it related to medicare so we'll make it as easy as we
possibly can right now we're going to talk about medicare supplement plans what exactly are they
and how do they work well medicare supplement is exactly the same thing as medigap so they
give it two different names but it is the same thing and what it is it's designed to fill the
gaps in medicare a and b so in other words what medicare a and b do not pay for a lot of that
will be paid under a medicare supplement plan so we'll figure out exactly how that all works
this is a list of all your medicare supplement options way too many and i'm not sure why they
put so many out here but we're going to narrow it down really to just a couple or a few that make
the most sense so stick with me for just a minute and let's first understand exactly how medicare
work so if you choose to stay with original medicare which is what i absolutely recommend
it gives you the most flexibility gives you the ability to choose any doctor any
hospital anywhere in the country that accepts medicare and that's one of the big parts
about why i would choose to stick with original medicare and you have medicare part a and you
have medicare part b so i don't know why they split it up into two different pieces but they do
so medicare part a covers inpatient care so it covers what happens inside the hospital basically
your room and board inside of the hospital and it does have some out of pocket expenses to it so
the good part about part a doesn't have a monthly premium so there's no cost to have medicare part a
but it does have a big deductible right now it's 1 484 and that is per occurrence so it's not per
year so in other words if you're admitted to the hospital more than once during the year you
likely will face that deductible more than one time so it can be a big out-of-pocket expense
there's also a co-insurance or a co-pay on extended hospital stay so it does cover
the hospital costs for days one through 60. but on day 61 to 90 it would cost you 371 dollars a day
91 to 150 742 a day obviously we wouldn't want to be in the hospital that long but if there
is a catastrophic event it can get significantly expensive so medicare part b covers things outside
the hospital so it covers outpatient care doctors visits outpatient surgery things of that nature
and it also has out-of-pocket expenses one thing about medicare part b that a lot of
people are surprised about it has a monthly premium so you have to pay a monthly premium
on medicare part b now that does not matter whether you choose
to stay on original medicare or whether you choose to go into a medicare advantage plan
you will still have your part b premium the base premium is 148 dollars and 50 cents right now and
it is income adjusted so if you make more money than you should and i have videos on all this as
well that monthly premium can go as high as 400 a month even higher than 400 a month so it can be a
pretty large out-of-pocket expense but you can have that premium regardless one way or another
so on part b it does also have a deductible but a small deductible so it's only 203 dollars
annually once a year you pay the first 203 dollars and then part b kicks in after that once
part b kicks in it's an 80 20 deal so medicare is going to pay 80 percent you're responsible for 20
and 20 not terribly bad again unless you have a catastrophic year so if you have a thousand
dollar year no big deal on your 20 but if you have a hundred thousand dollar a year could be a very
big deal on your 20 or more so keep that in mind that is the reason that we're going to look into
medicare supplement plans now there's also what's called possible excess charges on medicare part b
not going to go over that specifically right now i do have videos specifically on that
so make sure you look for that when we look at our overall picture of original medicare a and b you
can see here premium only on part b base is 148.50 and then deductibles a has a big one b has a
little one but there's still both deductibles and then coinsurance kind of catastrophic situations
on part a but regular situations on part b where you have that 20 percent out-of-pocket expense
so this is the reason we would look to get a medicare supplement plan is to cover most of
these obviously it won't cover the premium on part b but it will cover most everything else generally
deductible on part b is excluded but it does cover the deductible on part a which is the big
one that's the one we want to make sure that we don't have multiple times during the year so again
we're back to this chart of having thousands of choices on medicare supplement plans we don't need
this many choices really it breaks down to plan f plan g and plan n and i have a video specifically
one pretty good one on g versus n what makes the most sense i'll post it right up here so that you
can click on it and review plan g and plan n so that you understand the differences plan f
kind of the most popular plan but it's not even available anymore if you turn 65 after 2020 but
it really didn't make that much financial sense anyway g was almost always a better choice than
plan f so anyway this is what we do is we help people figure this all out make sure you get the
right value the lowest cost with the best coverage and that's exactly what we want to do when we come
into medicare and i can tell you with medicare supplement plans they work like they're supposed
to so i have literally zero customer service calls i don't have people calling me asking me
why this thing covered if that didn't get it works exactly the way it's supposed to and that's one of
the best parts about having original medicare with a medicare supplement plan is you know what it's
going to do and it does exactly what it's going to do and your out-of-pocket costs can be very it can
really just be that deductible of 203 dollars for the year and then it can be 100 coverage
after that so again if you have any questions this is what we do we're happy to help give a
call send me an email or visit medicareonvideo.com put in your basic information we will email you
the lowest cost best value medicare supplement plan in your zip code and that's the easiest way
to do it so i hope you found this helpful i hope you'll allow us to help you again
no cost to you we'll make sure we get all your pieces in the right places have a fantastic day