Medicare Supplement "Medigap" 2026

This is the Truth Network. Um Welcome to Finishing Well, brought to you by CardinalGuide.com with certified financial planner Hans Scheil, best-selling author and financial planner, helping families finish well for over 40 years. On Finishing Well, we'll examine both biblical and practical knowledge to assist families in finishing well, including discussions on managing Social Security, Medicare, IRAID, long-term care, life insurance, investments, and taxes.

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Well, welcome to Finishing Well with Certified Financial Planner Hans Scheil. And today is right in his sweet spot. I can tell you, it's Medicare Supplement. Medigap twenty twenty six. And so you may know that that has to do with our Medicare coverage, and things are changing.

And so it's important that we get some fresh information as far as I'm concerned because When you look at this, uh and and what the point that they make in their video so well is if You make a mistake here when you choose when you're 65, depending on what happens with your health, you could be stuck with a really bad choice for the rest of your life. And so there is this opportunity, this window of grace that God gives us, like he gave Joseph, right? That he told Joseph, you're going to have these years where you're doing well, and then it's going to get hard.

Well, for most of us, we're going to have windows of grace. Our health is going to be good for a while. But when it goes bad, and when you get really bad, sick, and you need that insurance, That's when this information is going to become critical for you.

So, you know, making a good choice while you have the time to do it and while you're in good health, it really is wisdom. And I'm so glad that you're doing this video today. I mean, this radio show today, Hans? Yeah, so What we need to do before we start talking about Medicare supplement and Medigap. is we need to talk about Medicare.

and what it is and what it is that needs to be supplemented. And so You know, with Medicare, you got Part A. which is your hospital bill. And you got part B. which is medical and outpatient.

And these days, Most of what you have done falls under Part B. I mean, even when I had that surgery on my knee. I never spent the night. Nothing was part A. It was all part B.

And it was It was a lot of money. That was paid. And I, you know, I just could go through. If I had the same thing in 2026. I have to pay a $283 annual deductible under Part B, which is not much.

Um You pay that every January or February if you're on Medicare. And then once you have paid that $283 deductible, Medicare pays 80%. of the bill and you as the client or the Medicare beneficiary responsible for 20%. of the bill. And you're also responsible for any excess charges.

So if the doctor charged more than Medicare allowed, you would be responsible for paying that too. And I'm sure there's people listening say, wait a minute, I don't pay 20% of all the charges under Medicare. Um And you probably don't because you're either on a supplement. or you've gone with a Medicare Advantage plan, which is we're not talking about today. We're going to talk about them a little bit.

What we're talking about here is original Medicare.

So if you had that by itself, No supplement. It's going to pay pretty much 80% of your bill. and you're going to pay 20% and you're also going to pay any of the excess charges.

Now if you went into the hospital It's a different deal. It's under Part A. and you have a $1,736 deductible. It's funny, you'd think they could make that an even amount, but it's $1,736. in twenty twenty five, and that covers your first sixty days in the hospital.

which very few people stay in the hospital longer than 60 days.

So If you went into the hospital, you spent the night there, spent several nights. you pay the first seventeen hundred and thirty six dollars, Medicare pays the whole rest. And then you're still going to have Part B charges because the doctors come see you in the hospital. Yeah. Medicare is going to pay 80% of their bill, 20% UPAC.

Now that's why you need a supplement. is the supplement We're going to get into those in the second part of the show. It's to fill in all these deductibles and co-payments. leaving you in a good spot. I want to talk about Medicare Advantage a little bit because we've quit giving consumers this Part A and Part B.

explanation that I just gave you. My salespeople and the my customer service people here at Cardinal. They don't even, when they sit down with somebody, they don't go over Part A and Part B. What they go over is original Medicare. or the Medicare Advantage plan.

And the Medicare Advantage plan showed up in 2006.

So they've been around going on 20 years. PM They've become so prevalent, half the people on Medicare, so probably half of you listening, you might be on a Medicare advantage point. Yeah. Um everything I just explained to you is not accurate. Because if you're on a Medicare Advantage plan, you've said bye-bye to Original Medicare.

And you've chosen to get your Medicare from a Outside insurance company PN All the co-payments, everything, all the rules are different.

Okay, so let's talk about that for a second. Yes. Why wouldn't I want a Medicare Advantage plan? I mean, just because they sound pretty good. They offer extra benefits.

You know, you get a gym membership and you get. Uh money for growth allowance. I mean, there's a whole bunch of stuff that you get. The co-payments are lower than I just described. They sound wonderful and the biggest stop sign with Medicare Advantage plans.

Here's You have to use their doctors and hospitals. You have to play the network game. And then in many situations, you have to get a referral to a specialist, and then that specialist needs to get approval to do surgeries on you.

Okay, so you're putting yourself in managed care. And there's a lot of people that have gone there. Zed or not happy.

Okay. That. Because I've seen it with several relatives. is that the deductibles on those like every time you go to the emergency room or You need an ambulance. A lot of times they won't even pay anything.

towards that ambulance. Um that they have all sorts of other fees and things that that aren't in a Medigap pol policy. Again, when when when I saw somebody in my family get bad sick, then all of a sudden the Medicare Advantage plan, whoa, it you know, it got real expensive real quick.

So we've got other videos on Medicare Advantage plans, and I'm not saying they're all bad. I'm not trying to alarm people, but generally the people that are praising them are healthy people. Yeah. the fact that they have zero premium. and the fact that they have all these ancillary benefits, dental, Vision, gym membership.

food allowance or whatever, they're praising all of that. But you just think about it, the people that are very seriously sick. Many of them are not praising them. And that's what you buy insurance for.

So what we're talking about today is staying on original Medicare. And being faced with these deductibles and copayments. because you're faced with them than purchasing supplemental insurance that are going to fill almost all of those gaps. Um And when that's I'll talk to you about the almost. But That's what we're talking about today is the Medigap plans and the Medicare supplement.

Because By the time we get to the supplements, many people are so confused they've tuned me out or they've turned the radio off. Or they've They're they're they're just man this stuff is so crazy. You know, but but it's just now that you need Once you've decided to stay on original Medicare, and purchase a supplement.

Now you've got to start all over. And you got to get rid of a lot of preconceived notions. And now I'm going to give you an education. on buying and keeping your Medicare supplement or your Medigap policy.

Okay, so now that we're relying on original Medicare. Because frankly, I've been in the business 50 years. Yeah, and I started in 1976. And from 1976 to 2006, which is my first 30 years in the business. Pretty much Medicare Advantage was not available.

So this is what everybody had was original Medicare, Part A and Part B, and then we sold them supplemental insurance.

So I want to go back and give a little history lesson. When Medicare came out in 1966, The part A deductible was $40. And then in the 10 years that happened before I came in the business in 1976. It had grown to $140.

Now keep in mind. The part A deductible is now seventeen hundred and thirty six dollars. In 1990, it was $592. In twenty ten, it was $1,100, and in 2026, it's $1,736.

So it's grown. That's some pretty strong inflation in 60 years. Um But $1,736. If you had no supplement, you're on Part A, you go in the hospital, that covers us your only expense for the first 60 days.

Now let's go over to Part B. The Part B annual deductible is two hundred eighty three dollars in twenty twenty six. It started in nineteen sixty six at fifty dollars. And when I started in the business, it was $60. In 1976.

In nineteen ninety, it was seventy five dollars. 2010, it was $155. it's now two hundred eighty three dollars. And it's my feeling that This deductible is an area when they try to cut costs in Medicare in the future. Wouldn't surprise me at all if 10 years from now the part be deductible.

has gone from two hundred eighty three dollars to $1,000.

So Um Get ready for that. But that is not a reason to get away from original Medicare. It's just something you need to prepare for. is be ready to start paying more. in the future.

And in the second part of the show, We're going to talk about Medicare supplements. what you can do about all these deductibles and co-payments and buying the insurance to go along with Medicare. Right. And one of the things that we talked about is some of these decisions that you make, especially at 65. Um You're going to be really excited to see you.

You can get some information you really need, and we're going to go over that as well.

So, it's a good time to remind you that this show is brought to you by Cardinal Guide, CardinalGuide.com. And if you go to CardinalGuide.com, there, you're going to find the seven worries tabs. And one of those worries is Medicare. And boy, it's a complicated thing, and it's so helpful to get information. And so, there's a wonderful video with all sorts of show notes and graphs and all that stuff there at cardinalguy.com under the Medicare, just exactly the same title as we have today.

And uh at the Medigap for 2026. And of course, you got Hans's book, The Complete Cardinal Guide to Planning for and Living in Retirement, and the workbook that goes along with that. And let me just say, if you read that on this subject, it really gives you a wonderful, basic understanding of what a Medicare is, what a Medicare supplement is, what a Medicare advantage remote. plan is all those things are all there in his book wonderful book the complete cardinal guide to planning for and living in retirement of course to make it easy you can just call hans or tom and tell them your situation they can even help you see what kind you have and help you make decisions on what to do based on that particular situation again it's all there at cardinalguide.com so when we come back we'll have a whole lot more on medicare Uh Medigap 2026. Investment advisory services offered through Brookstrone Capital Management LLC, abbreviated BCM.

a registered investment advisor. BCM and Cardinal Advisors are independent of each other. Insurance products and services are not offered through BCM, but are offered and sold through individually licensed and appointed agents. Cardinal Advisors is not affiliated with or endorsed by the Social Security Administration or any other government agency. Welcome back to Finishing Well with Certified Financial Planner Hans Scheil.

And today's show is on Medicare Medigap for 2026. And so, Hans. Uh it's time we get into that Wonderful. I I love this topic. Yeah, so we went over First part of the show, part A and part B.

original Medicare, the deductibles, the copayments, Really points out: like, why do you why you need a supplement policy? to go with original Medicare. And so what we've done is simplified this a bit. taken something that's pretty complicated and simplified it. Yeah.

What I want to point out is that the Medicare supplement policies are standardized. meaning that the government dictates to the insurance companies you can s only sell these policies.

So in other words If you get a policy, a Plan G policy. from Mutual of Omaha. And you get a plan G policy. from Blue Cross. and you get a Plan G from Medeco, and so on and so forth.

It's an identical policy from all of those companies.

So it was clear back in 1990. that the government mandated the standardized supplements.

So the companies had to start over reprice the plans and come out with all new policies that was thirty six years ago.

Okay. And in their genius, they named them A, B, C. C, D, so on and so forth. Which was great, because now you got Medicare part A, Medicare Part B. Medicare Part C, Medicare Part D, and then the policies to supplement them.

are named A B C you talk about a recipe for confusion. Mm-hmm.

So we're not talking about Medicare now, we're talking about the supplemental policies and the names that they have. are after letters similar to Medicare. And because there's 10 plans available. in most states All identical from company to company. And then there's three states: Massachusetts, Minnesota, and Wisconsin.

They still have standardized policies. They're just different than the rest.

So in 47 states, They're all called ABCDEFG. Um And what we've done is we've simplified it down. to three of those plans. that we typically offer to consumers. And that's the pl G.

The high deductible G And the plan in.

Okay. Our business You're at Cardinal. you know, we write about a thousand of these a year. And of the thousand we write a year, I would say that nine hundred and ninety of them are either a G plan, a high deductible G, or the N plan.

So we're going to make it simple, and we're only going to talk about those three today.

Okay. Yep. is the most comprehensive of all the policies that are on the board. and it pays all your deductibles and copayments. Under Part A and Part B.

except for the Part B deductible. the two hundred and eighty three dollar annual expense And this is what you have, Robbie.

So why don't you speak about it a little bit? The $283 is on you. Right. You usually if you go to the doctor or anything, you you're gonna pay your deductible, you know, coming out of the chute. you know, early on in the year and then the rest of the year You pretty much covered That is absolutely wonderful if you want my opinion.

You know, I. got a spider bite. I you know, you go to the emergency room and like you walk out of there and you well, you don't you know, you're fine. You just walk out of there, no payment, no nothing. It's wonderful.

Well, yeah. And people start taking this for granted. Um And it's okay. I mean, they they just know Yeah. You know, I bought a G-plan.

I could certainly afford to take on a little more of the risk myself and go, I just like that. For my wife and me, it's just You can't get spoiled. Yeah. I can tell you about customers that come into us or they call us up and they say, you know, I was in the hospital, I had all these bills. I had surgery.

Yeah, I'm just waiting, when do I pay something? And it's just like You don't. And some people that really weren't paying attention to all this, they just bought what we told them and. They can't believe it. You pay that $283 in the beginning of the year.

Um probably for something else or But even if you didn't go to the doctor all year and now you had this big expense, it's $283. That's it.

So Anyhow, that's the most comprehensive coverage. It also includes foreign travel emergency.

So if you're a person that travels around the world, and it includes this benefit for excess charges, which we're going to talk about in a second.

So And the pricing, we've even put the pricing in the video and in the show notes. And we priced a 70-year-old Female who's single. In North Carolina, and we came up with five companies offering the G-Plan. Bankers Fidelity, $107 a month. Medico, 129 a month, Cigna, 133.

Aetna 160 and United Healthcare 161. And we did that just to show five companies a difference in price of Almost fifty bucks. A month. identical coverage.

Okay. Oh, I don't know. Why is that? Why do they charge different prices?

Well, how about if I just tell you because they do? I mean, they're insurance companies. We can do that on another day.

So some people buy the least expensive one.

Some people have some preferences. Company name and that kind of thing. We can leave that up for when you're shopping. I just wanted you to. Get an understanding.

of kind of what we're talking about for a 70-year-old person. is single. There's marital discounts. Household discounts. Uh men are a little more expensive.

But So that's the G plan. In New York. It's the same G plan is $350 a month.

Okay. I mean, it's huge. In Florida, the same G plan is $250 a month, $240 a month. But here in North Carolina 130, 150, 160 bucks a month.

Now Many people, especially in New York and Florida and different places, they buy the high deductible G plan. and the high deductible G plan is the same as the regular G plan. with a difference there's almost a $3,000 annual deductible before the supplement pays anything.

So you know, if you're wanting to take on the first three thousand bucks, of Medicare deductibles and copayments. then you might want to go for one of these high deductible G plans. Bankers Fidelity charges thirty seven bucks a month The most expensive of the five of the four companies that we picked, Cigna is $51 a month, so they're all pretty similar in price. Um It's identical G plan, except for you got that $3,000 deductible.

Some people like that as it makes it insurance. My question is, and I know it's an absolutely critical decision when you turn sixty five. And You know, there's guaranteed issue.

So no matter what your health has been. There's no health questions at 65. And so now you're going to make a choice. Let's say you choose at this point in time, say, well, I'm pretty healthy other than whatever. And so I...

It looks to me like the high-deductible plan is going to be the winner because I'm not going to go to the doctor.

So you make that choice to go on a high-deductible plan. And then all of a sudden, now, wow, I'm on this medication that caused such and such well, it went to include medication, but for whatever reason, you're going to the doctor every other week and Are you stuck with that plan at that point in time? You are, unless you can answer health questions. Yeah, there's the bump it up to a regular G plan by filling out an application. you could get turned down.

Yeah. trying to get off your high deductible G.

So I think the point you're trying to make is Take your make your decision. seriously when you're turning 65 because you've got a guaranteed issue into any supplement that you want. We generally recommend that's what I bought at 65, that's what you bought. is the G plan. Then you bought it.

Um with a company that was charging you a fair price. Right. Let's talk a little bit. Then after a few years, you'd gotten enough rate increases. That you decided, didn't you go back on a Medicare Advantage plan for a year?

That's exactly what I did. I was on America. Right. And I went well, you did that just to save the supplement premium. Right.

But after a year on the advantage plan, you said I went off. Right. And so we put you back on a G plan, but with a different company because The original company you did had raised the rate pretty high, and you were in good enough health that you. you were able to pick your company. Yeah, and even if you hadn't done that, I mean, we have all day long, we have customers that bought a G-Plant.

from this company in twenty twenty or twenty twenty one and they've raised the premium enough that now we're changing our own customers from company A to company B. just because Company B is offering the same G plan, at a lower price and the customers can answer Company B's health questions.

So As long as you can answer those health questions no, you can split around on these supplements and you can make these decisions. But as soon as your health changes to something serious is My old buddy used to say, You get bad sick. Once you're bad sick, you could be stuck with whatever decisions you'd made up to that point. Right. Kind of so we got the G plan, we got the high-deductible G, which is real popular in New York because you're You know, you've got a $350 a month G plan.

and you can buy this high deductible G. for like 80 or 90 bucks a month. I mean you pay out $3,000 a year in premium, extra premium.

So people in the highly priced states. a lot of we sell more high deductible G's there than we do in North Carolina or the moderately priced states. But anyhow, so we got the G plan, the high-deductible G, and what's real popular on the internet. Is the end plan. I mean, you have a lot of experts out there that are saying, oh, buy the end plan.

Because it's so much less money. And furthermore, All the guaranteed issues from the Medic so let's talk about guaranteed issue for a second. is if your Medicare Advantage plan gets canceled, But they go out of business. you are a guaranteed issue that you can buy a G plan. from any company that you want.

So a lot of these experts say stay away from the G plan. By the end plan, Because it's not going to get all the sick people coming off of Medicare Advantage plans. It's not going to make the price go up.

Okay, and there's some merit to that discussion. But the reality is it just hasn't ha really happened. I hate we're out of time. Yeah, yeah, but it's, I got to remind you now that the show is brought to you by CardinalGuide, CardinalGuide.com, where the seven worries tabs are. And you can find this under the Medicare tab there, as well as a video on the same show as Hans' book, The Complete Cardinal Guide, Planning for The Complete Cardinal Guide to Planning for and Living in Retirement, and the workbook, and the contact Hans and Tom page to get the straight scoop on all this.

Great show, Hans. Thanks. Thank you, and God bless you. The opinions expressed by Hans Scheil and guests on this show are their own and do not reflect the opinions of this radio station. All statements and opinions expressed are based upon information considered reliable, although it should not be relied upon as such.

Any statements or opinions are subject to change without notice. Investments involve risk and unless otherwise stated are not guaranteed. Past performance cannot be used as an indicator to determine future results. Any strategies mentioned may not be suitable for everyone. Information Express does not take into account your specific situation or objectives and is not intended as recommendations appropriate for you.

Before acting on any information mentioned, please consult with a qualified tax or investment advisor to determine if it's suitable for your specific situation. Finishing Well is designed to provide accurate and authoritative information with regard to the subject covered. Investment advisory services offered through Brookstrone Capital Management LLC, abbreviated BCM, a registered investment advisor. BCM and Cardinal Advisors are independent of each other. Insurance products and services are not offered through BCM, but are offered and sold through individually licensed and appointed agents.

Cardinal Advisors is not affiliated with or endorsed by the Social Security Administration or any other government agency. We hope you enjoyed Finishing Well, brought to you by CardinalGuide.com. Visit CardinalGuide.com for free downloads of this show or previous shows on topics such as Social Security, Medicare, IRAs, long-term care, life insurance, investments, and taxes, as well as Han's best-selling book, The Complete Cardinal Guide to Planning for and Living in Retirement and the Workbook. Once again, for dozens of free resources, past shows, or to get Han's book, go to CardinalGuide.com. If you have a question, comment, or suggestion for future shows, click on the Finishing Well radio show on the website and send us a word.

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