So today's Lesson is for people, it's for you
if you're approaching Medicare, the sign up of Medicare for the very first time. Or if you've
already faced that and you decided to delay. So if if Medicare’s in front of you and then you
don't exactly know what to do, and when to do it, that's what this thing's made for. So this year's
version, I'm going to spend a little more time on this first set of decisions, which
is should I sign up for Medicare Part A? Should I sign up for B? Those aren't necessarily
what you're going to do at the same time, and why you'd want to do each one of them. Because
if we don't get this first set of decisions right, then we're going to be messed up, okay. So the
layout of today's presentation is, there's really three sets of decisions that you need to make in
regard to Medicare, and the first set of decisions is: Do I sign up at 65 or do I delay? Okay,
and then once you've made the decision to sign up- and that signing up is for both A
and B- now we're going to move to the decision of am I going to stay on original Medicare? Which
i've just signed up for, or am I going to go for one of these Medicare Advantage Plans, which
is Part C of Medicare. So that's a, that's going to be a binary decision. Where it's one way
or the other, is there there's no in between. And then we need to get through those
decisions, and then once we're there, then we're going to get to which insurance
company am I going to buy my insurance from. And I think where people get in trouble with
these decisions many times, as they use as their main source of information the people like
me that are insurance sales people. And so we're going to start with the company. We're going to
start with the third set of decisions, you know, which company to buy from- my company. And then
we're going to work all this stuff backwards, and that's where people get, not only confused
but they end up selecting the wrong product and the wrong decisions around all of this
stuff. So we're going to do it, I think, in the right order. And we're going to start right
out with the, ‘Do I sign up for Medicare now?’ Or do- and the main reason for delaying is going to
be because you're working, you're still working, and this is the number one question that we
get written into us constantly or people ask us when they call us. You know I'm really, I'm really
thinking about those penalties.Tell me about those penalties. I don't want to avoid the- I want to
avoid the penalties. I'm still working. I'm going to continue working. I don't know how long. Or my
spouse is still working. I got group insurance. Should I sign up for A- should I sign or
just should I sign up for Medicare yes or no? And then when I say, ‘Well it doesn't sound like
you need to.’ Then they say ‘Well I don't want any penalties.’ So what we're going to do,
is we're going to stay right here and we're going to spend a little more time here: right in
the beginning. And then we can get on with the second and the third set of decisions. So if
you're still working and you have group insurance, the answer to that is probably ‘No’ for getting
Part B and it's ‘Maybe’ get Part A now.. maybe not. So let's start with Part A. So like,
why would I want to delay signing up for Part A of Medicare if I still am working and I have group
insurance? Well you're going to want to delay because- excuse me- you're going to want to sign
up for it now, because it has no monthly cost. I mean you've already paid for Part A of Medicare,
you just get it because you're turning 65. The reason you would not want to sign up for
it, is if you're part of a Health Savings Account. Under that group insurance, because
there's a little known regulation that says you can't have Medicare and an HSA, or add
to an HSA at the same time. So if if you're part of an HSA under your group insurance and
you're going to go past 65, it's probably best if you don't sign up for Part A. It's simple as
that, but if you're not part of an HSA you're going to continue your group insurance. You're
going to get your insurance from someone else. Go ahead and sign up for A, okay. But then now
we're down to B. So with Part B, it's a little bit different at the decision, because Part B
in 2022 is going to cost you $171.10 a month. So that's over $2,000 a year you're going to have
to kick out for Part B. And if you need Medicare, which probably most of you watching do, I say
you know you need to sign up for this Part B when you're turning 65 and just go ahead and
work on it. But if you're still working or your spouse is still working, and you have group
insurance, and it's all satisfactory to you, then you're probably going to
want to delay the start of Part B until such time as you lose your group insurance.
Now, how about the ‘probably’ there? Well, and how about those penalties that I’ve read about
for Part B? Well the ‘probably’ comes in there, is if you're going to delay signing up for Part
B, or in other words not sign up for it now, rely on the group insurance, you're going to
want to make sure that your group insurance- and I can help you do this- is what the Medicare
calls Creditable Coverage. And so you're going to later need to prove to Medicare, since 65,
until the time that you actually want Medicare, and you need Medicare, you're going to
need to prove during all this time where you're relying on group insurance that you had
Creditable Coverage. Which gets you a free pass against the penalties. And you can just go ahead
and sign up right at the time you need it. Maybe a year, two, three years forward. And so creditable
coverage, let's talk about that for a minute. It's basically group insurance from a company
that has 20 or more full-time employees, from your own spouse, from you
or your spouse's employer. So you know that's the situation
that I'm in. I'm 63½. When I turn 65, my wife is still going to be like 63½. And my
group, we only have 11 employees here at Cardinal, so we don't we don't fit into this deal, and so
I'm going to have to sign up for Medicare Part A and Part B and buy a supplement. And I may need to
keep my group insurance for a year just so I can cover my wife who's not an employee of Cardinal.
So I'm going to be in a little bit of a pickle, but we provide this kind of consulting and I would
recommend it to you if you're turning 65. You know you don't really want to try this at home. I
can, I can look through pretty quick and walk you through this thing. Sometimes it's the spouse,
I mean sometimes we've got a person turning 65 and they're covered under their husband or wife's
group insurance as a spouse. And this is optional to them, so we're going to just really need
to talk through whether it's going to be a good idea for you to sign up for Medicare Part
A and Medicare Part B. That's really the gist I wanted to get this, and I I'm expecting this to
cut down a little bit on the questions: Should I sign up for Medicare now or not? And what about
the penalties? Because the penalties are going to come in if you mess all this up. So if you don't
sign up for A and B when you were supposed to, because your coverage wasn't Creditable or
you were relying on the Veterans Plan or Cobra or something else and you mistakenly went
without Medicare- relied on some other insurance. And now it's a year or two later
and now you want to get on Medicare. And we discover that you're not only going to
have trouble getting on it and some delays, but you're going to pay a penalty. And then once
they assess a penalty, that penalty under Medicare is for the rest of your life. So these things are
worthy of avoiding, most of the time we're able to get you out of these you know, in other
words, is think our way through a solution. But I'd much rather talk to you in the beginning
and help you through this and then set up you as a potential client for later on when you do
need Medicare. Then we can help you get signed up and then we can sell you some kind of
insurance to supplement it, okay. So now we're going to move on to the decisions: #2
and #3- which is the rest of the presentation, okay. So decision #2 boils down to this, is you're
already signed up, you're on Medicare Part A, you're on Medicare Part B, you're all
set up to pay your $170.10 a month and more if you're a high income person and you got
you're having to pay IRMAA maybe $2-300 a month. But original Medicare by itself is really not
enough, okay. It's just not, and so people have a need and that's where the insurance companies come
in. People have a need to either supplement it and then enroll in a Part D. So that's
one route to go. Or what you're able to do is take your original Medicare and turn it
into a Medicare Advantage by your election, or you're outsourcing Medicare,
or Medicare's outsourcing you, is you're going to now receive your Medicare
from a private insurance company. And this you're not really able to supplement it. So this
works pretty well as just a standalone coverage. So there's some reasons you want to do this.
There's some reasons you don't want to do this, you want to be a little beware. There's also some
reasons you want to stay on original Medicare, you want to buy a supplement, and then you
want to get a standalone Part D Drug Plan. So there's reasons: pluses and minuses both ways,
but this is where I got into that second decision, and I'm saying it's an either or thing.
Once you're on original Medicare, you're either going to stay there and supplement
it with these two things, or you're going to take your original Medicare and receive it from
a private insurance company under Part C. So that's a decision that you're going
to need to make before we get down into which particular plan you're going to buy, or
which insurance company you're going to buy from. So this isn't either/or, and unfortunately a lot
of folks don't go over this that are selling it to you. They're just going
to start you down this track, because that's what they're selling is Medicare
Advantage plans. Or they're going to start you down the Medicare supplement track leaving you
on original Medicare, you know in other words, these people don't necessarily tell you
about this alternative. And these people just start you here, and they don't tell you about
this alternative. That's not true of everybody and this is why people get so confused, and when I
meet them and they've already talked to a number of people, researched a lot of things, and they
start asking questions. They take attributes of the original Medicare and the Supplement and they
start applying them to a Medicare Advantage plan. Or in the reverse, they take attributes of the
Medicare Advantage and they start applying it to all of this stuff. And a little bit of this,
a little bit of that and they're so confused they don't know which end is up. And a
lot of people just end up buying something to feel like they've done something, and you know,
it's not good. So let's talk about why you would want to do one or the other. I mean the biggest
reason people go the Medicare Advantage route, of basically turning their original Medicare
into a Medicare Advantage, is the premium for many of these plans is zero. So in other words
the insurance company is going to take you on and they're not going to charge you directly
anything. Because they're going to be paid from the government- behind the scenes- and they
don't have to charge anything. So a lot of folks, when money's real tight, they're going to go with
these Medicare Advantage plans. And for that, for making this change, along with a zero
premium, you're going to get extra benefits: you get Dental, you get Vision. Most of the time
they throw in a Part D Plan. So that's already coming with it. All of this stuff happens at
zero premium and extra benefits, well what's not to love about that? This is the stuff that you see
Joe Namath talking about on TV constantly, and Joe Montana and all the Joe’s, and the quarterbacks,
and all that kind of stuff. They're all, the all they talk about is the extra benefits you're going
to get Dental. You're going to get premium back, you get on a meal plan. Well all that stuff is
wonderful and it is for many people. We offer these type of plans, so if you want to evaluate
that we offer most of them, but I don't have all the details of that up here because that does take
all day. We're going to.. we're in all 50 states, in the District of Columbia, so if you're
interested in evaluating that and getting at this we're going to look at the cross-section of plans
in your zip code, what's really available to you, and then we're going to look at it. And if
you'd like, we're going to compare this option to staying on original Medicare and then
supplementing it. And a bunch of options inside of there, so it's more of a personal thing when
you get down to making this decision, I'm just explaining it to you generally. Now why would
you not want to do this? The biggest drawback to this Medicare Advantage business is the
fact that you have to deal with networks. And that you have a list of doctors that are
approved on the plan, and you have to go to them for care, or you need to make sure who you're
going to is on there. Same with hospitals. Now that's not the end of the world, because many of
you turning 65, you've been on group insurance, you've been on some kind of insurance that has a
network and you're used to that. And it's not like they're going to force a network on you because we
have a selection of many many different companies offering Medicare Advantage plans. And so we can
take your doctors and work backwards, and find one that works for you. So I don't want to talk
bad about these things, they're just a deterrent and they don't necessarily travel well. So if
you want to go for care- you know you want to go to the Mayo Clinic, or you wanted to
go to the Cleveland Clinic or Houston, you know for the Cancer Center. And and
you know when somebody gets seriously sick, they have a tendency to want to go see the best
in the best research hospital. That's where all of a sudden you've planned a network around
your local city, you might run into problems, okay. So and even for more minor things,
this can add a certain element of hassle. So that's the deterrent, the network. The plus is
you get a bunch of extra stuff for zero premium and you get all that without having a cost,
it's good. Now let's go back and look at the other alternative. The other alternative
is you stay on original Medicare Part A and Part B which is your doctor and outpatient
and if you just have that you're going to face some fairly large deductibles under Part A.
And under Part B, you've got an open-ended 20% essentially that you're paying. Medicare pays
80% and you have open-ended- there's no cap on that. So if you had $10,000 or $100,000 of bills
under Part B, you would be responsible for 20% of that open-ended and that's a problem.
And so this type of coverage calls for you to supplement it, and that's pretty easy to do
these days. The.. let's talk about the supplements for a minute, is we represent over 40 different
insurance companies that offer these supplements. And the thing that's interesting is these
companies all offer identical policies. So, there's only 10 plans available for these
insurance companies to... The government designed the plans, and they laid them out. And then the
insurance companies pick which of those they offer. And the best of those plans available to
people going on Medicare now, is the G policy. So don't want to get into a bunch of details,
there's 10 of them, the one with the letter G offers the most benefits. So we're going to only
talk about that today. If you want to call me up and talk about some of the other options, we'll
show them all to you, we represent them. But the important thing for you to get in this
lesson is, like in your zip code, there's probably 40 different insurance companies offering
40 different Plan G’s at 40 different prices. And they're all identical in benefits. A G is a G is a
G is a G. And it's a really good policy. It covers almost all the deductibles. There's only one
deductible of $233 dollars under Part B in 2022, which is the Part B deductible that's not covered
by the G plan. The rest of it's covered, so if you go with original Medicare and you buy
a Plan G Medicare Supplement, you're going to be real happy with the insurance coverage you
have. You also are going to have no networks: Doctors and Hospitals. You can go to any Doctor
in the United States, anywhere that accepts Medicare. You're even going to have coverage if
the Doctor accepts Medicare but they charge you Excess Charges. The Plan G actually picks up the
Excess Charge or the Balance Bill. I mean it's, it's truly phenomenal coverage, is
plugging a lot of the holes in it, people that have this are real happy.
But it's not necessarily cheap. So people who don't want to pay this Medicare
supplement premium, we're back over here, okay. And like I said, this is not a bad
alternative. This is like the luxury plan, and what I want to show you is the variances across
the country. Now the North Carolina price and the California price for Plan G's are going
to be what most of the country- somewhere between those two- and a lot of the country is going to be
right around the North Carolina price. I use that because that's, we're in Durham, North Carolina
and we have a lot of our customers locally. As I said we have customers in all 50 states, in DC,
and we're taking calls from people all over the US. And most of the country is going to be at this
price range. Now, so let's talk about that first. In North Carolina, the Aetna plan charges $111
a month for a Male who's 65, who's single, okay. So why did I pick a Male, 65, and single?
I'm making the price as high as it could be. If this was a female, this price would probably
be a $100 a month. I mean $103. So women are charged less in many states or most states, and
in North Carolina. And then if this male was living with another adult, so people
that cohabitate in the same household, many times married, they collect or in other
words they cost the insurance company less money just statistically, so you get this thing called
a household discount. So this would be down around $100 a month if this single Male, so so I tried
to show you the highest it could be at a given age instead of the lowest. But it could be less than
this, it also could be more than this if you're watching this video a year later, because this
is the rate at the beginning of the year. Some of these insurance companies throughout the year
could have a rate change for all new business. Now the exact same G Plan with AARP
in North Carolina is $117 a month. Mutual of Omaha $123. We represent all these
companies so there's not a huge difference here in prices, but there's there's some company
charging $175 a month for this exact same thing. I just don't have them on the board. Now you go to
California, this same Aetna is $191 a month, but you can buy the AARP Plan for $133, or Cigna for
$137, so this varies state to state who wins the pricing game. You get to Florida, they're in a
much tighter band here. In Florida, it just has a lot of regulations and they're more expensive-
Florida's one of the more expensive states. You call in, you people from Florida you could
just talk to me, and it's pretty much across the companies in a tighter band, but you can save
a little money by selecting one company over the other. And New York is the most expensive
state. And the, actually the best deal there, is through AARP: $278 a month. And we have
many people in New York that go for this, and they go this route just because the best
deal we can give them is, is still you know over $3,000 a year for the supplemental coverage,
it might lean some people more toward that. Then you have the folks who just they don't want
anything to do with this. They're willing to pay the money, and then there's some options to
lower the coverage a bit or change it and get the premiums down. But I just wanted to show
you a cross section, that if you give us a call, and you want to stay on original Medicare.
You don't want to mess with networks. We're probably going to recommend the Plan G,
and this gives you an idea of pricing for that. Now if you stay on this route, you're
going to need to buy a separate Part D Plan. And the Part D Plan is fairly inexpensive,
it is many times it's going to be closer to that $10 month than it will be $40 a month or more.
Just trying to give you a general idea of pricing, because behind the scenes, the government is
paying the Part D drug company a lot of money to have you as a customer. So this
is just a small piece of the cost, but you will incur this, but you'll also get the
opportunity to pick from about 10 different plans. So we can plug your drugs in and figure out which
Part D company is going to give you the best deal. Now you also you don't get any Dental on original
Medicare so you can buy standalone Dental and Vision from us, okay. Now, I want to move on with
the subject to the next question is: Who do you buy it from? These same companies offer Medicare
Advantage, so these five companies are the biggies in the Medicare supplement business, they're also
the biggies in the Medicare Advantage plans, and there's more than just these. So so once you've
picked in the pick the route you want to go, now we're going to get into what company
do you buy it from and which plan do you want to get. And I kind of did that for you in
the Medicare Supplement and walked you around. It's really very hard to do that on a video
on the Part C, but we'll go through, you get us on the phone or we can do a Zoom, however
you want to do it. We can trade some emails, where we can show you some options under this,
if this zero premium and the extra benefits is attractive to you, okay. And that's about
all I'm gonna say about picking a company. We're pretty neutral on that. We don't, we'd like
you to become a customer of us, but we we don't really care which company that with, is with,
because we represent most of them like I said. Now I want to talk about Social Security sign
up because that's facing people turning 65 as well. And you do a lot of research
on that, just a couple of simple things, is there are still people that believe that Social
Security starts at 65 or should start at 65. And it can start at 65, but you're going to
get a smaller benefit. Some of you started it back at 62, and you already know that you got a
smaller benefit, but you've already collected a couple years of checks. And I mean that's purely
your option, you probably are not still working, because it doesn't work very well to start your
Social Security early or before Full Retirement Age. Collect your Social Security and still have
money from a job, that doesn't work real well, but we're we're financial planners. I'm a CFP and
we assist people with this whole Social Security business. I've got other YouTube videos, but I
want to make a point: is the people born in 1957, your Full Retirement Age is 66 and 6 Months.
And you ask, ‘Why is it some odd amount?’ Well it's because there's a phase-in, it's working
its way to 67, we're just not quite there yet. So for you Full Retirement Age is 66 and 6 Months
and what that means is you can start getting your Social Security check at 66 and 6 months. You'll
get the full Social Security check and you can keep working. So if you make other income past
Full Retirement Age or past other service income, collecting your Social Security check pass, that
doesn't really create problems or an additional tax. For those of you born in 1958- which is
the year I was born, vintage year of course -66 and 8 Months. This is the first time I'm making
one of these Medicare videos where I'm actually talking about myself, but for those people born in
1958 our Full Retirement Age is 66 and 8 Months. Now many of you are going to delay as
long as 70. That's what I'm going to do, and I'm going to continue, plan to keep working.
You're going to get a much larger check but you will do without checks for three years, plus. So
we can help you with Social Security decisions and one of the reasons I'm bringing it up, because
many of you are turning 65 or approaching that, this decision is still in front of you. I also
want to let you know that you're going to be going to Social Security to get Medicare. That's,
you go to the Social Security administration to sign up for Medicare, and if you're already
getting Social Security check they're just going to mail you a card. You don't even
need to sign up for all this business. In fact if you don't want it when you turn 65,
you're already getting yourself, you're going to have to unsign yourself up. I can help you
do that too. Now, and we just make mention that if you also have the option of applying for
Social Security under your spouse's benefit, even if your spouse is deceased, that's
going to be an even larger benefit from that. Aand you can just come in and talk to us
about that, sometimes people can get more from Social Security by applying as a
spouse, okay. A couple more things I wanted to talk about. People turning 65, you
know if they got if you have money in a 401K and you've mainly been concerned
and worked on the investment of that and contributing to that and watched your balance
grow. Now you have the problem facing retirement of, What are you going to do with that? And it's
not so much what are you going to do with the investment of that- How are you going to live
off of that or do you need to live off of it? Do you want to roll that over into an IRA? And
then do you want to create an income from that? What about taxes, how does that affect your Social
Security? This is a big area that we help people. We have areas of Roth conversions. There's a whole
bunch of stuff around that, but if you have this hunk of money, you're approaching retirement. It's
probably something you're going to want to get some help with, you can do that here at Cardinal.
We also are in the Life Insurance business and generally people in retirement, some people don't
feel like they need any Life Insurance and you're not going to hear much argument out of us.
But many folks see the need for either a smaller amount of Life Insurance, just so there
will be something there, and a Life Insurance payment to settle their final expenses. There's
many people that start thinking about their Estate and now it calls for a larger amount of Life
Insurance and we're consultants and can help people with that. And then the Long-Term Care
question, that's something that if you haven't already planned for that, we ought to take
a look at it. So we're not going to cloud a Medicare discussion or Medicare
decisions with all of this extra stuff, but if you call in to us, and we do your
Medicare consulting we're available to help you with all this other stuff too. So I'm Hans
Scheil and I thank you very much for listening.
