if you're getting ready to come into medicare there are a lot of choices that you're going
to need to make and there's some big ones and one of the biggest ones is whether or not to
choose a medicare advantage plan and there's a lot of confusion a lot of misinformation and
my lord a lot of tv commercials so i'm gonna go over right now
medicare advantage the untold story so i'm gonna give you some idea some clear understanding
exactly what a medicare advantage plan is versus original medicare so whichever decision you make
you know you made the right choice so stay with me and i'll show you exactly how they work
i'm keith armbrick 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 everything i have
to offer and allow me to help you with your medicare choices now once videos are finished
there's usually still some questions feel free to give me a call send me an email i'll be happy to
answer any medicare question that you may have so i'll do what i can to make sure you get the
answers that you need so we're going to now talk about medicare advantage the untold story and just
to be perfectly upfront i do not sell medicare advantage plans i choose not to i absolutely could
but i choose not to primarily because it's not something i would choose myself and i don't feel
comfortable recommending something that i would not choose myself but i'm going to give you the
clear picture on how they work and how it works versus original medicare because there's a lot of
misinformation out there so first question is what is the difference so we have original medicare
which is medicare part a medicare part b and that will now come versus a medicare advantage plan so
why are they different and they are completely different so the first thing to do is understand
the functioning of how they work so medicare original a and b is through the federal government
it's run by the centers for medicare services so cms versus a medicare advantage plan which
then brings you over from original medicare over to an insurance carrier so it is a
private insurance plan it's very similar to what you may have currently either at work
or even through the affordable care coverage where you have a somewhat hmo type plan where you have
in-network benefits through an insurance carrier that is what a medicare advantage plan is
now it's a common occurrence that people try to figure out why are they so cheap
because a lot of medicare advantage plans advertise some as low as zero premium some very
low premiums twenty dollars twenty five dollars a month and so on and it's it's good to understand
why that can be and the reason is that medicare the federal government pays a medicare advantage
plan to take you off of original medicare so this is the chart for 2021 coming up and this
is actually going to surprise some insurance agents where medicare or the federal government
pays a medicare advantage plan somewhere in the neighborhood of about a thousand dollars a month
to essentially take over your claims so that medicare no longer has responsibility for your
claim so that insurance carrier gets a large monthly premium for every person that they can
entice or gain into their medicare advantage plan so there you go for all the tv commercials that's
why the market is so heavy because it is very profitable to have members come into a medicare
advantage plan so that's first thing to understand so that's why we have joe namath all over our tv
this year we had mike ditka on our tv we also had joan london kelsey grammer i saw
just multitudes of celebrities and what these are these are commercials that are essentially
call centers selling medicare advantage plans and they are marketing marketing marketing so
they are selling you into a medicare advantage plan and they try to absolutely make it sound
as wonderful as it can possibly be but make sure you understand the small print the benefits
that are included and how they function because it functions completely different
than original medicare so let's talk a little bit about do they work the same and absolutely
they do not work the same so with original medicare you generally would have part a part
b you would likely get a medicare supplement plan that covers what part a and part b do not
and that's what i do i do medicare supplement plans and you'd likely get a medicare drug
plan as well and that gives you pretty much full coverage now with the original medicare
you don't have any limitations you can choose any doctor any hospital anywhere in the country
that accepts medicare and you don't have to ask permission to do it you simply can call make an
appointment give them your medicare card give them your supplement card and that's all there is to it
also a high level of satisfaction i can only tell you that from personal experience i have thousands
of clients all over the country and if i get two customer service calls in a month that's a lot in
a couple of months that's still a lot so my phone just doesn't ring with customer service calls
which means it does exactly what it's supposed to do and that's what absolutely i would want
is to have no problems with my health insurance certainly after age 65. now with medicare
advantage plans there is a network of doctors so generally you're going to have to use a network of
specific doctors that are in whichever plan you choose a network of specific hospitals that are
in whichever plan you choose now to be fair some plans are considered ppo plans where they have
out of network benefits so you could go out of the network but what you will generally find is it's
cost prohibitive to go out of network it's very expensive to go out of network so they are going
to do what they can to make you stay in network and also a referral may be needed to go from a
specialist or from a primary to a specialist so if you need to go see a cardiologist you might have
to go see your regular doctor first might have to wait a couple of weeks to get an appointment
get a referral then make an appointment with the cardiologist maybe a couple more weeks and anyway
that's that's why i personally do not sell or recommend medicare advantage plans because they
they kind of take away the freedom or flexibility of what i would want to do with my health care so
important to understand how they work and i don't have a level of satisfaction over here i can
promise you if i sold medicare advantage plans my phone would be ringing all day every day and if
you google reviews on certain medicare advantage plans you'll see exactly what i'm talking about
medicare supplement with original medicare generally just works exactly the way it's supposed
to so are the costs the same between the two and they're set up differently so it's important to
understand this as well one misunderstanding or misconception with a medicare advantage plan is
oh then you don't need to pay your part b premium part b medicare premiums are paid
no matter which way you go so you're going to pay that medicare part b premium you will see some
of these guys on tv telling you that they will credit that part b premium back to you make sure
you look closely into that it's only if you're at a very low income level and basically on medicaid
type scenario where you're getting government assistance so pretty rare for that to happen
for the majority of us so make sure you understand that as well all the benefits that they say they
offer they're generally limited in most ways so make sure you look very closely so when we're
looking at the cost medicare supplement again same things that we had just previously there is
a monthly premium with a medicare supplement plan and it can run about a hundred bucks a month so
sometimes less sometimes a little more but about 100 bucks a month and with a medicare supplement
with medicare a and b your out-of-pocket cost is super low might even be 200 bucks a year
for out of pocket for medical for the entire year versus a medicare advantage plan where it has a
lower monthly cost so again some will tell you there is no monthly cost but it's usually 20 30 40
a month depends on what part of the country you're in but again what's going to happen is when you
get into it it's the out of pocket costs that are going to make the difference so generally
much higher out of pocket costs where the scenario with the medicare and b with a supplement
may have a 200 yearly out-of-pocket max the medicare advantage plan can be as high as 6 500
out of pocket max so significant difference when you go to use them so that gives you a pretty good
idea on the untold story and i'm happy to tell you more if you give me a call or send me an email and
again i'm not looking to shift you into one or the other but i want you to make sure you understand
before because it's a big decision because once you make your decision
you're essentially somewhat locked in so you want to make sure we get it right the first time
so make sure you visit medicareonvideo.com i have a tremendous amount of information
there that can help you and again we're happy to help with any of this so give us a call
we'll walk you through it if we can help you with a supplement that's fantastic uh and i hope that
we get your pieces all in the right places so i hope you found this helpful have a fantastic day