If you're turning 65 and coming up on Medicare,
today's video is really going to give you some of the learning that I think you need to get
started on this whole process. So, you really have three decisions that are critical, and you
need to get them right, and you need to understand the sequence of these three decisions. So the
first one is going to be with Original Medicare, Parts A and B, is whether you sign up for
them when you turn 65 or whether you delay, and so you say well, what about
delay? Well if you're still working and covered under group insurance you may want to
delay your start of Medicare Parts A and part B until the time you leave your work, or you may
not, if you need the Medicare insurance or you're not working or you're paying for insurance on
your own then that's a pretty simple decision, you're going to want to sign up for
Medicare, Original Medicare Parts A and B, okay, so once you make that decision now we move
on is how are you going to receive your Medicare? Are you going to stay on Original Medicare or are
you going to purchase a Medicare Advantage plan, which is really going on Part C, and it's getting
your insurance, your Medicare insurance, from a private insurance company instead of directly
from the government? So that's one route to go is the Medicare Advantage route. The other route
is to take keep your Original Medicare, still get your Medicare insurance directly from the
government, and purchase a Supplement to Medicare, and this is a completely different route. So
you're going to get your Medicare from the government, you got fairly large deductibles
and copayments, or you've got liability, and what you're going to do is you're going to
stay on that and then you're going to purchase a supplemental plan, which is going to pay all those
liabilities for you, or most of them, so that you have very little out of pocket. So these are two
very distinct routes as you're going to have this plus this ,or you're going to have this turned
into this, so that's the second decision. And then the third decision is going
to be once you've made those first two, is what insurance company are you going to
buy your insurance from? So if you're over here on the Medicare Supplement route, you've got,
we're just showing you prices around the country for six of these companies, but
it's the same companies that offer Medicare Supplement offer the Medicare Advantage
plans, and we're going to be into that, as well as the standalone Part D drug plans, so those
are the three decisions that we need to make, and what I'm going to do today is get into
each one of those decisions a little bit and tell you what's going on so that you can
really make them from an educated place. So Original Medicare is broken into two parts
- it's Part A, which is your hospital bill and your hospital coverage, and Part A does
not cost you anything once you're on it, okay, you've been paying taxes your whole life for
this and now when you're on Medicare you just sign up for Part A and you're entitled
to it. Part B is a little bit different, it is your doctor and outpatient, it's the
part of Medicare that pays 80% of your bill, and then that's leaving you with 20% of the
bill, which is going to come out of your pocket, and that's why people buy Medicare
Supplements if they stay on Original Medicare. So you got Part A and Part B, and Part
B costs $148.50 a month, and most people have this deducted from their Social Security
check if they're on Social Security already. If you're not on Social Security yet, you're
going to have to pay this bill into Medicare, $148.50, and if you're a high income person,
you've got this thing called IRMAA, which is a an additional, it's like a surcharge, and
it can make this, you know, up to triple or higher than triple, quadruple, this amount
when you put the two together, I mean it's just for high income people. If you want to learn about
IRMAA, just give me a call get in touch with me, I can walk you all through it. With Part B you've
got these lifetime penalties for making a late sign up where you didn't do this properly,
so you really, if you're a working person, now working and covered under group insurance,
and you've decided to delay, make that decision cautiously because if you later get on to
Part B and you didn't do things properly, you're going to have to pay a penalty and you
might not be able to get on it as quickly as you want. So that's the first decision, whether we're
going to start this at turning 65 or we're going to start it at some later date. Okay, so then
when we move into the second decision is really whether or not you're going to take this and turn
it into this, which is a Medicare Advantage, okay, or you're going to stay on Original Medicare and
you're going to add to it a Medicare Supplement, okay, and all of that is outlined here. Now
if I'm going to help you with the decision, so why would you want to do one or the other,
because this is just a clearly a one or the other thing that you need to make before you start
digging into which company. So the Advantages, or the pluses of Medicare Advantage, are a few,
number one is many of these come at zero premium, so if you're able to get on Medicare A and B
and then outsource your Medicare to a company, like Humana, or UnitedHealthcare/AARP, that type
of company, most likely you're not going to have to pay any premium, it's a zero premium, and
some of them will also give you some money back toward this Part B premium that you got to
make, so you get a credit back for that, so the advantages to this is it generally costs
less out of your pocket, while you're healthy, on the Medicare Advantage. You also get some of
these extras, like you get included a Part D drug plan just comes with the package, you have
dental, you have vision, some of these offer gym memberships, they offer food plans, there's a
lot of extras that come with these, okay, that's the pluses. The disadvantages to these Medicare
Advantage plans is, number one, you have a network of doctors and hospitals. So generally you need
to go to the doctors and the hospitals that are on the plan and covered under the network. Now
most people are used to networks if they've been on group insurance under 65, so this is not real
troubling, but it is a disadvantage to these plans that you know you, you're going to have to play
by their rules. You also have deductibles and co-payments on these plans, not as high as you
have on Original Medicare, they're much smaller, but they still add up over time. Now the other
route, or the other piece of this decision, is you're going the Medicare Supplement route and
that's where you have Original Medicare and then you're adding to it a Medicare Supplement, and
the Medicare Supplement is going to pay this 20% that's not covered under Part B, that's what
it's for, it'll even pay excess charges, and it also, when you're turning 65, you've got an
open enrollment onto these Medicare Supplements, meaning that you have to
answer no health questions at all, you can, you know, we have people that are
on kidney dialysis, or people that have cancer, people with diabetes, people with
very serious chronic illnesses, where under normal circumstances they wouldn't
be able to even get a Medicare Supplement, they're guaranteed that they can pick any company
they want within six months, or when they go on Medicare, it's called open enrollment, so
there would be a reason to go this route if you've got a serious chronic illness,
or at least to consider going this route, is you can buy these policies without answering
any health questions. And then you know what we're featured here, and what most of our customers buy,
is the Plan G, and the Plan G is just, A, B, C, D,blah blah blah blah blah... has the most
benefits that are available to people turning 65. Now and what we've shown here is the pricing
across the country, and we're started out in New York, which you know, we're in all
50 states, in the District of Columbia, we're licensed there and we can take care
of people anywhere in the United States. New York is the most expensive to buy a Plan G and
you can look at the difference in pricing here, is that AARP is going to charge you $268 a month
for a Plan G, 65 years old, in New York, and Mutual of Omaha is going to charge you almost
double that for exactly the same thing - all of these prices here, regardless of which company
they're with, are for exactly the same thing. So why would you want, what are the advantages of
going Original Medicare and a Medicare Supplement? So the advantage number one is you can
go to any doctor in the United States and hospital that accepts Medicare. I mean
that's huge for a lot of folks is you're not going to have to mess with a network, so
that could well be the biggest advantage. The second advantage of these is they take
care of most, and the Plan G covers most of your deductibles and co-payments, in fact when
I say most, there's going to be a $230 Part B deductible in 2021, and that's going to be your
only liability for stuff covered under Medicare between Original Medicare and a Supplement,
so there's a real clear advantage, is this is going to pay better when you're sick and it's
going to let you go to any doctor in hospital that takes Medicare, and the disadvantage is
you've got to pay this premium every month, as opposed to the zero premium, so you know
and that may depend on which state you're in. If you're over in North Carolina, which is where
our business is located and I live, this is one of the lowest priced states in the country, and
you can see that there's some variance in cost, and we're just showing these six companies,
there's actually about 40 different companies in any given state that offer the Medicare Supplement
coverage, and they're all selling exactly the same thing, so price is a big factor, and we're able
to spread sheet these things and let you decide. Now another advantage, and then you could call
it a disadvantage, of going the Original Medicare plus a Medicare Supplement is you also need to
purchase a Part D drug plan, so the disadvantage is you got to pay the premium for that, $10 to $40
a month, some of these have actually come down in premium over time, but what the advantage to that
is is we can actually plug in the drugs you're on and we can get you with the one that's
going to pay the best on your drugs, so whereas you're over here, you're not going
to have to pay for your Part D drug plan, it's just going to come as part of the
plan, but what the disadvantage to that is you're just going to get whatever's
tacked onto the plan that you want, here you're going to have choice. Okay so then
the third decision that you're going to make is, once you've decided whether you're going to go
here or you're going to go here and here and here, is what company are you going to buy it
from, and, you know, we can offer you more choices than these six, but these are names
that you're going to recognize most likely, and many of the other companies you've not heard
of them before but they're perfectly fine options, we can go over that when you call us and show
you different options, but I've chosen these six because they're the largest, they're also,
with the exception of Mutual of Omaha, they're the main companies that offer the Medicare
Advantage plans. So when you come over here, you can look at an Aetna Medicare Advantage,
you can look at a United Healthcare AARP, you can look at Humana, you can look at Wellcare,
and then when you're over here, you can look at these ones plus a bunch more, and they're
the same companies that offer the drug plans, and then we as well offer standalone dental
and vision, so, and you have to pay for that separately if you buy a separate policy for it,
you're going to get some coverage for that over here at a zero premium under the Medicare
Advantage plan. So we're pretty neutral as whether which route you're going to want
to go, and we become less neutral once we get to know you and find out what your preferences
are, what your budget is for this sort of thing, so we provide consulting on it. Now I want to talk
about a couple more things before we sign off. One is a question that we get asked many times is that
a lot of folks think that Social Security starts when they turn 65, and it used to work that way,
and it can actually start now earlier than 65, but we have this thing with Social
Security called Full Retirement Age or DRA, and the same people that do Medicare do Social
Security, or the same Social Security does Medicare, so when you're talking to them, you're
going to need to talk to them about when you're going to start your Social Security, and Full
Retirement Age is on its way to 67. So you know, at my age, I'm 62, my full retirement age, I
was born in 1958, is 66 and 8 months. People just a little bit younger than me, it's going
to be 67. And for you, if you were born in 1950, your full retirement age is 66 and 4 months, if
you're 1957, it's 66 in 6 months. And what full retirement age means is that's when you're going
to get your full benefit of Social Security. Now you still may want not want to start on that
date, you may want to delay all the way to 70 because you'll get a larger check, but you're
also going to miss out on those checks. Some of you may already be on Social Security
because you started early, then this whole explanation is kind of a mute point. There's also
factors with Social Security about your spouse, is that many of you will collect on your spouse who's
the higher earner. If that's the situation, if you have a deceased spouse and you didn't remarry
before 60, you can collect off of their benefit, divorce spouse the same thing, different benefit,
so there's a lot of consulting that can be done on that, and what I'll add on this video is age 64
is a great time to be looking at your IRA and 401k and seeing now I'm going to need to turn that
into an income in retirement, how do I do that? We can certainly help you with that. Life
insurance it's a point where it's Life Insurance is still affordable and if you've been relying
on group insurance, or you have term insurance that's expiring, we can get you a smallish policy
or smaller policy or even a large policy that's going to be enforce for the rest of your life.
And then we need to have the discussion about long-term care insurance and who's going to take
care of you when you can't take care of yourself if that situation happens to you. I'm Hans
Scheil and I thank you very much for listening.
