Medicare AEP: Election Time

Hello, this is Will Hardy with ManTalk Radio. We are all about breaking down the walls of race and denomination. Your chosen Truth Network Podcast is starting in just a few minutes.

Enjoy it, share it, but most of all, thank you for listening to the Truth Network Podcast. 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, IRAs, long-term care, life insurance, investments, and taxes. Now let's get started with Finishing Well. Well, today's finishing well has to do with, you know, the time of year that it is, and anybody that's paying any attention knows that it's election time.

Sure. Maybe not the election you were thinking about, but it's all about election when it comes to this time of year, especially in your line of work, right? Right? It's the annual election period for Medicare Advantage. So it is?

October 15th to December 7th. So it gives me an open mic to be able to speak about election for just a minute. For those, you know, yes, we're going to talk about Medicare, and we're going to talk about that election, but I want to talk about the other election, because these people turn my head every once in a while, where I begin to think that, wow, that guy, he must be worse than Adolf Hitler.

I mean, the way that people are describing that particular, you know, candidate, and I see these commercials, and I think, man, that's the lowest I've ever seen any human being. And then all of a sudden, this thought rings out of my mind that the only election that really is significant to me is to elect Jesus. And if I elect Jesus, then all of a sudden, my battle is no longer against flesh and blood, so no matter who the Presidential Academy—he cannot be near the demon that they're being described.

Actually, he's my brother to some extent, and I should be praying for him, because obviously, he's got more deception coming his way than any possible person. But the real election, if I choose Jesus, this is not the most important election season that ever came up. The one where I chose Jesus is, in fact, that, and it brings home this verse of Romans 8.28. All things work together, right?

Sure. For those who love the Lord and are called according to His purpose, and it's going to work out. It's going to be great, as is, you know, your choice during the election period of Medicare. And so, last show, Hans, we went all into, you know, what it was like to actually sign up for Medicare.

But now, all of a sudden, in this season, a lot of people are talking about Part C and Part D. And so, we want to kind of pick up where we left off last week. Well, I just want to tell you where I find the average person that's been on Medicare for three, four, five, six years. And if I really sat them down, which I do with some, because I'm just curious of when they meet me for the first time, and I'm counseling them about Medicare, and it's this time of year, I'm going to say so it's the annual enrollment period.

They already know that, so tell me something I don't know. It's October 15th to December 7th. Now, could you just tell me what that is?

What does that mean? So, it's Medicare annual election period, October 15th to December. What do you elect?

What do you get to do? And I'm going to answer my own question, as most people, they come up with something. That's the time of year that I elect my Medicare.

Okay. So, what do you elect with Medicare? I mean, you're already on Medicare.

Well, I don't know. And so, I think therein lies a lot of the problem with this whole Medicare deal is that clients, which is you folks, or consumers, people that are on Medicare and buy insurance to go with their Medicare, many of them limit their knowledge or learning or whatever you want to call it about Medicare to the people that call on them to sell them something. Or their own experience that they've already had for three or four years if they're 68, 69 years old and they've been on it for a while. They just kind of know, well, I've been on this and so I kind of have to do something. I don't know exactly what it is or maybe they're going to say I've changed my drug plan, but I don't really need to do that.

I mean, so there's a whole lot of confusion around this. And so, what I think would be helpful is what we did on the last show last week. We're going to do it again this week and we're going to keep doing it through this Medicare season is just talk about, so what is Medicare Part A, what is Part B, what is Part C, and what is Part D? And I think that the whole world of consumers that have Medicare, that face this season every year and they rely on their Medicare all year long.

But also I would throw in another group that I don't, you know, that I think is really helpful. That like how wonderful would it have been for me to counsel my mom or my dad if they didn't understand all these things which, you know, as it turned out, I can see the difference between how my mom got handled versus how my dad got handled. You know, my father is pretty smart and he had that stuff figured out, but other people that I know, dear people, you know, if somebody in their family, their sons and daughters would study this, I can think of a widow that I talk to all the time and I talk to her several times, but so many times she says, well, she's on Medicare and she won't get stuff done because she's on Medicare Advantage and she can't pay the copays and she can't pay this and pay that. And I think, wow, a son, a daughter, somebody that was concerned if they'd gone into disciple mode and began to learn about these things, they really, really could have helped their mom as actually you and I are helping her at this point trying to get going in the right direction because it is that time of year. Way to bring the rest of our listeners in because that's always one of my concerns when talking about Medicare. We have a lot of listeners that are in their 50s, early 60s, people in their 40s, and they, I mean, the way I'm talking to them about Medicare, well, it's a few years off for them, but the place where this is real beneficial, I helped my mom, I helped my dad, you helped your mom, you helped your dad, and my guess is as many of you have learned about Medicare and it might be your experience with Medicare is just through your parents and it's even more limited. So this is going to give you an opportunity, not just through this show today, but to get involved with finishing well, and we go over this stuff every seven weeks.

We're talking about Medicare. It's in my books. It's on our website. And what I would desire for as much of or as many of the consumers, especially our Christian consumers, who we love coming to us as clients, just doing business with Christian people is wonderful. I just tell you that from the other side of the business, is for you to become educated and informed and able to make really self-directed, beneficial decisions.

And if you can do that for your parents, I'll be glad to get on the phone with you and your mom and dad, and we can even be in different places and just kind of talk through whatever problem they're having. But I think if you give this a listen, so you've got Part A and Part B, which is on your red, white, and blue card. You've got a start date of that. Part A is the hospital. Part B is the doctor and outpatient. So that's the crux of your Medicare coverage. If you're still on original Medicare, which a lot of people are, that's your insurance. You get it from the government. You pay for Part B.

It comes out of your Social Security check. And then most people that are on original Medicare have a Medicare supplement policy as well. And that's an area that we help a lot of people is to try to get them to a better priced Medicare supplement, because they don't all charge the same prices. So that's an area where we help people. But it's real helpful for people in general to just understand what's going on. If you're covered under Part A, you're covered under Part B, and then you have a supplemental policy from a private insurance company that pays the gaps in Medicare.

Yeah, which, you know, I'll jump in here and say, okay, here I am. I just made these elections. But I made them, not because it's the annual election period, because I wasn't choosing on Part C. I was choosing to join Medicare to begin with.

But the reason I did was I don't want to end up like my friend who's the winner. I saw the coverage my dad had because he had original Medicare in Part A, Part B, and he had a drug plan. And he had bought the top-of-the-line Medicare supplement. And his hospital bills the last years of his life were in the hundreds of thousands of dollars, right? And he might have paid $20 or $30 here or there for something that didn't quite get covered.

But I can assure you it didn't equal $150 for those hundreds of thousands of dollars based on how good a coverage that he had. Versus my mother-in-law, you know, who is on a Medicare Advantage plan. And I can hear her just the other night saying to me, man, these doctor bills just keep going up and up and up. And as a result of being on Medicare Advantage, which is the Part C plan, which is the annual election plan that people are talking about right now.

And the same thing with my widow friend. She can't afford the medical stuff that she needs because she is on a Medicare Advantage. Well, sure. And so what I want people to understand, especially coming into the annual election period, of just what it is they're buying here and what it is that people are pitching on TV, okay? And that's a bit of the dark side of it. So, you know, and if I listen to that, we'd have, you know, maybe nobody on Medicare Advantage plan.

There are some upsides to that. But by and large, most of our customers, they're on Original Medicare, Part A, Part B, and then they carry an individual supplement of which you're paying like $105 a month. When you're, if you were 75 years old now, you might be paying $150 for it, or $160, $170. Still well worth it. I mean, your dad was paying almost $300 a month.

And I remember going out and calling on him and talking to him about it. So, the Medicare annual election period that starts on October 15th has nothing to do with what we just talked about. In other words, you can change your Medicare supplement policy any time of year.

You signed up for your Part A and your Part B, Original Medicare. That doesn't have anything to do with the next seven weeks, okay? So, when you see these commercials on TV, I want you to know what they're about and what they're selling you. And we sell this stuff too. So, I don't want to talk about them like they're bad. It's just, to me, it seems a little bit bad of how they're presented to the people.

Let's put it that way. And what it is, is that is Part C and Part D of Medicare. So, Part C is receiving your A and B, receiving your Medicare from a private insurance company. And you do that by election. So, starting October 15th, you could dial up that phone number for Humana. And you could say, I want to elect Humana Medicare Advantage Plan. And they could fill it out starting October 15th. It would start January 1st.

So, it would start for a couple months. And then you're going to now, when you go to the doctor or the hospital, you're going to show them your Humana card instead of your Medicare card. Because you, by your election, have chosen Humana to deliver your Medicare to you, okay? And then, typically, that Medicare Part C with Humana is going to also include a drug plan, which is Part D. So, you're going to get the whole thing all in one place. And you're going to need to drop your Medicare supplement policy, okay? So, that means that you're going to save the premium. If you're paying 100, like, you could make this election, and you now would save $105 a month.

Right. If I did that, there's no doubt that month by month, I would save money, which we're going to find out a whole lot more about that. If you stay tuned, we've got so much more election time on finishing the well with certified financial planner, Hans Scheil. Find us all at cardinalguide.com. Hans and I would love to take our show on the road to your church, Sunday school, Christian, or civic room. Here's a chance for you to advance the kingdom through financial resources by leveraging Hans' expertise in qualified charitable contributions, Veterans' aid and attendance, IRAs, Social Security, Medicare, and long-term care. Just go to cardinalguide.com and contact Hans to schedule a live recording of Finishing Well at your church, Sunday school, Christian, or civic group. Contact Hans at cardinalguide.com.

That's cardinalguide.com. So, welcome back to Finishing Well with certified financial planner Hans Scheil. Today's show is election time, but we're talking about election with Medicare, and specifically Medicare Part C, because we've talked at length that Robbie's on Part A and B, and now you might find out, like, why would Robbie ever, in his wildest dreams, choose to elect Part C, Hans? Okay, so just putting this in position, I'm going to answer your question, is you have this, you could make this election starting in about three weeks, okay, or two weeks, you could then call up Humana, if you are, you can call me, you know, I'd prefer you call me, but I'm just picking a company, and that's what they're wanting you to do on the 800 number on the commercial, is to call them up, and you could make this election, you could say, I want the Humana gold plan or whatever, and then, you know, the first thing I'm going to tell you is you need to make sure that the doctors that you want to go to are on their doctor plan, okay, or their network, and the hospital you want to go to is in the network, so why would you want to do this? Okay, what would be motivating you to do this, and number one, you could dump your Medicare supplement that's costing you $105 a month, you could just say bye-bye to that, and bye-bye to the premium, in fact, by law, you have to drop it, okay, so now you're $105 to the good. The second thing is you could dump the Medicare Part D plan that you bought from us, from WellCare, and that's $16 a month, and that covers your drugs, and you, because you're going to get that as part of the Humana gold plan, so you could dump that, so now you're about $121 to the good. And they're going to pay my $144.50? No, the Part B premium that they either take out of your social security check or they say...

So wait a minute, I'm trying, this is happening, how is this fair? So they are, the government is paying them to provide my Medicare, but I've got to still pay the government to provide my Medicare? Well, it's just because the $144.60 is just one small piece of the real cost of covering you on Part B. Okay. Okay? So I... You've still got to pay for Part B. I've still got to pay the $144, and by the way, in a quarter shot, which is going to be $433. Sure.

I don't want to get people confused here, is that to be on Medicare, whether you're on A and B, original Medicare, or you've gone to a Part C, Medicare Advantage, you have to keep A and B in force, and you've got to pay the government for Part B. So that's going to stay the same. You're just going to now get your Medicare from Humana.

Okay. And so why would you want to do that? Well, you would want to do that to save the $105 a month. You send Mutual of Omaha for the supplement. You'd also save the $16 a month that you send WellCare to pay for your drug plan. And then you also could get some extra benefits, like some limited dental, vision, gym membership, some other things that they've thought of. And that would be pretty much the reasons that you would go on a Medicare Advantage plan. So in other words, if the Medicare supplement and the drug plan I'm paying for are really more than I could fit into my budget, but the challenge is it's kind of like I remember when I sold extended warranties to the people when they bought a car.

It's like the people that wouldn't possibly have the money to pay for the extended warranty were the people that needed it the worst, right, which is what ends up happening, it seems like, with Medicare Advantage, is that Medicare Advantage has these copays. So let's just stay – you're right. Let's stay on why you would want to do this.

Okay. It would be to save money in premiums and get a few extra benefits that sometimes on some of the plans they can get somewhat attractive. But – and then if you were 75 years old, your premium that you're saving would be higher on your Medicare supplement. Right, because if it's 300, then obviously – Yeah, it's some jack, you know, and it's going to save you some money.

So why would you not want to do this? Because that's where I was going next and for the reasons you just articulated is you got deductibles and copayments. That's – I mean that stuff adds up and it's – if you get sick in a year, it's not going to take a lot to add up to 120 button bucks a month times 12. So – Yeah, because what I see with, you know, relatives is it's not a matter that they're sick. They just have all these chronic things where they have constant doctor's appointments and constant, you know, things that are, you know, oxygen and all sorts of stuff that they're faced with. And this stuff adds up to way more than the supplement.

Absolutely. And with the supplement and original Medicare, you're just golden with that stuff. So let's – so why you would not want it – let's just make a list. Why we would not want to go the Medicare Advantage route would be deductibles and copayments that can add up to substantial. The second reason is you got to mess around with networks. You're in managed care. So, you know, if you go to a doctor that's on your network and then he or she refers you to a specialist, they've got to refer you within the network. And it could be that if you get – you know, as my old buddy used to say, if you get bad sick, you know, if you – you know, if I get bad sick, I'm going to consult every doctor that's within a thousand miles or I'm going to at least consider that. And I'm going to ask my doctor and I'm not going to let my insurance stop me from going and seeing a specialist or going to Duke Cancer Center or over here at Bowman Gray School of Medicine or just wherever. And Medicare Advantage plans don't necessarily travel well with their networks. Medicare – original Medicare and a supplement is great. So that would be another reason that you wouldn't want these.

I mean then that's kind of it. Yeah, and it just – so it gets back to the – you know, there's a little bit of pain with having to pay the supplement insurance because I'm on original part A and part B. But the long-term gain is that if I get it now when I'm healthy, right, I get the lower rate.

Sure. Right, and it'll take it longer to scale up on me because, you know, I got it when it was the deal. Sure, and we'll probably end up changing your Medicare supplement in three or four years to the next big company that's offering it maybe not for 106, but they might be offering it the plan G that you got for 118 when you're 68 or 69. And the Mutual of Omaha that you have now may have grown to 153. Well, we'll just move you as long as your health is good. So you're going to keep going down that scale every few years by changing from company to company. But again, just to add clarity, there is no election period for that.

No. So whenever Mutual of Omaha decides to raise the rates, that's the time when Robbie calls 1-800-HON. Well, sure, and we'll probably be calling you because we monitor all that stuff. And we represent in Medicare supplements about 40 insurance companies, so different insurance companies, and they all sell exactly the same thing. So why wouldn't we represent everybody and just do what's in the best interest of our customers? But for those folks like the two people I know of that really in my mind don't need to be on Medicare Advantage, but this time is a critical time for them, right?

Well, sure it is. And here's the other thing you can do during the election period. Let's just say that one of these people had Humana, okay, and they can't afford, or in the case of one of them that I know of, her health. If she's on oxygen, there's no Medicare supplement company going to take her unless we could figure and haggle a guaranteed issue. So we're also going to keep an eye on that. If there's ever a time that we could get her in somehow on a guaranteed issue, we could bring her in without asking health questions. But I don't see that happening anytime soon. So where this matters to her is we could sit down starting in October, and we represent Humana, UnitedHealthcare, AARP, Aetna, Cigna, WellCare, Anthem Blue Cross.

There's a few more, okay? We got the list of them, and most of the places you would buy this stuff from, you're only getting a one company sales pitch. And we have a web portal or a thing, you know, these, you know, whatever you call that. Software. Software, yeah, software.

That's good, Rob. I have all these young people that work with me, like Tom, that are just, they can make this happen in five minutes. And I'm better off with the old paper, but they, we can offer you all of those companies. And we could enter, like the person that we're talking about, we could enter all of her doctors, all of her just in the system. And then we could run it across all five, and we could possibly find a more favorable Medicare Advantage plan for her situation.

And then we could move her to that, and there won't be any health questions. So that's what all of you listening, or it could be with your parents, maybe your parents are on Medicare Advantage. They need to stay there, but yet they are dissatisfied with what they have. We could consider moving them to a different plan with a different company, and that could work out for them. You could have some parents that are on a Medicare Advantage plan that just got talked into this. They're dissatisfied, and they have the health, because you can have some health conditions and still qualify for Medicare Supplement Insurance. It's just if you're on oxygen, you're not, that's going to be a no on most of them, or all of them, if you're on oxygen now. Now, if you were on oxygen six months ago, but you're not on it now, you could possibly get in unless there were some other things.

So you could have somebody, or this could be one of your parents, where you've got somebody that's up there in years. They've got some health conditions, but they still could slide through on one of our 40 companies. Some of these companies are easier than others on underwriting, and we could get them off of the Medicare Advantage plan and onto a Medicare Supplement, and then get them enrolled in a separate drug plan, kind of put them back where they were back when they started Medicare. We could talk about doing all of that. Right, and then the other group is the drug care, right?

Because this is the next year this time, during election time, which happens to go inside with election time. But anyway, if all of a sudden I get put on a new prescription, and these things all, you represent tons of those too. We do.

We represent most of them. And we do a lot of that, where somebody has, you know, maybe they've got well care, and it just was costing them a lot, and co-payments, or one of their drugs wasn't covered, or something. They got on a new drug, well then during this annual election, we can put their drugs in the computer, into the software, and pick what is the best drug company and possibly make a change in that. So it's really Medicare Part C and Medicare Part D that you can change around from October 15th to December 7th.

And we're going to keep talking about this on the radio show throughout the season. And we're not going to talk about it all day every day, but we're going to keep talking about Medicare a little bit out of our normal circuit, just to keep people informed of all this. Yeah, because you don't want to see anybody in something that doesn't work well for them when there's lots of options, which you can see there's lots of information to learn for disciples that like to learn this kind of stuff. Hans' book, The Complete Cardinal Guide to Planning for and Living and Retirement is there at the website, cardinalguide.com. Of course, if you just want to email Hans your question, he would love to hear from you.

His heart is that we would be better informed in order to make better decisions, especially at election time. Thank you for listening. Thank you. 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 Hans' 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 Hans' 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. Once again, that's cardinalguide.com, cardinalguide.com.