Medicare 101 The Map

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This is the Truth Network. Welcome to Finishing Wealth, 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 Wealth, we'll examine both biblical and practical knowledge to assist families in finishing wealth, including discussions on managing social security, Medicare, IRAs, long-term care, life insurance, investments, and taxes. Now let's get started with Finishing Wealth. Well, Finishing Wealth is a general discussion and education of the issues facing retirees. CardinalGuide.com, Cardinal Advisors, and Hans Scheil CFP, sell insurance.

This show does not offer investment products or investment advice. I'm really excited about today's show as we're going to refer to it as Medicare 101, the map. In other words, in order to know where you're going, you often need a map. And when things are confusing, you know, the more you kind of need that.

And so, interestingly, in Psalm 119, verse 19, there's this beautiful verse where King David, the psalmist, said, you know, I'm a stranger on the earth. Hide not your commandments from me. And, you know, that may seem confusing.

And one of those things is you begin to think through Medicare and all the different moving parts. Just picture King David as he was looking at the Scriptures right then. There are 613 of those commandments from the Jewish perspective at that point in time. Fortunately, what Jesus did was add huge clarity to that map for King David, because here he was saying, I'm lost.

I need a map, right? Hide, don't hide it from me. And what Jesus did was let's boil this down to all of that is two commandments.

Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your strength, and your neighbor as yourself. And all of a sudden, you kind of take something that seemed beyond comprehension and boil it down to something, okay, now I can navigate that as I begin to work on those two things. And so we're hoping today, in our map through the Medicare program, that we can kind of do that same thing, right Hans?

Yeah. I mean, the Medicare annual enrollment period is coming up. And it creates even more of a frenzy.

I mean, these people aren't trying to do that. But it's just, people are already a bit unclear or confused about Medicare. And then all the TV commercials start. They'll start on October 1. And then on October 15, you can actually do one of these enrollments.

And you can do that all the way up till December 7. So they're just, they're on TV. Your mailbox is just stuffed full of flyers.

You go down to your church and they're having a seminar, you know, Humana is putting on a seminar there, an educational seminar, your civic meeting at the Senior Center. I mean, it's all over the place. And Joe Namath is on TV.

You probably see him all year long, but that really ramps up on October 1. And, you know, 1613 commandments is actually kind of low. I think there's more than that in the Medicare doctrine or whatever.

Or it certainly seems like that. And what we are going to do today is we're going to create the map. Because we're going to talk about this whole problem. And we're going to talk about this period, what it means to you.

And really to do that, people are in different places. And we're going to have to end a sentence in a preposition. I'm going to say, where are you at?

And you really need to figure out where you are. Where, where, how are you receiving your Medicare right now? And so that is going to make this whole thing make a little sense. You've had a little experience with this Medicare misinformation and confusion, Ravi.

Oh my goodness. Yeah, you know, it's kind of funny. Almost everywhere I go, I hear these conversations about Medicare. And when I try to chime in, like, well, I don't think you have that quite right. In fact, I was at a Bible study this weekend. And this couple was going on and on. And when I tried to chime in, they were like, you don't know what you're talking about. My wife said, well, he's on a radio show about it every week. And I just sat there and marveled at how much, you know, people were just zealous about this misinformation that they had.

And I, you know, it's a difficult situation if you don't really know where you're at. Yeah. And so what I would suggest for anyone listening, is that you would, if it's not too difficult for you, go to my YouTube channel, and that you would just, under Cardinal Advisors, and that's A-D-V-I-S-O-R-S, or you just go on our website, cardinalguide.com, and just send me a message with your email or something, or email Hans at cardinalguide.com, and tell me you'd like a copy of this Medicare video.

And I'll just send you a link on YouTube. It would really be helpful for you to watch this thing where I've got two full boards that just lay out the whole map. Right. Because again, when you are looking at something visually, it's helpful because you have the board. But also to kind of, you know, get people where they are, you know, one of the first questions seems like always, am I on regular Medicare, or am I on Medicare Advantage, especially when it comes to this whole idea of an annual enrollment period, right? Most people that I survey have difficulty telling me the answer to that question, because it's either or. So if you're on Medicare, and you're past 65, and you did sign up for it, you are one of two places. You're either on original Medicare, you have Part A and Part B. And when you go to the doctor, you show them your red, white, and blue card. And then most likely, you have a supplement that's probably called Plan G, or Plan F, or Plan N, to go along with that.

And so that's one place you can be. The other place is you're on Medicare Part C, Medicare Advantage. And what that is, is you chose at some point to leave original Medicare and go and receive your Medicare from a private insurance company, like Humana, or like UnitedHealthcare AARP, or like Aetna, or like Blue Cross Blue Shield. And so you're not getting your health insurance directly from the government, from Medicare anymore, you're getting it from a private insurance company. And if you're in that situation, not only do you not have a supplement in Medicare, you can't have a Medicare supplement, because the two don't work together. So you're in one place or the other place.

And that's the start of the confusion, is people listen to these commercials, or you listen to these people talking, they're in a different place than you. They're either on original Medicare and a supplement, and you might be on an Advantage plan, and you're listening to them for the troubles they had, or whatever wisdom that they had that they're putting in there, and it doesn't apply to you. Or you're on original Medicare and a supplement, and you've got the benefits of that, and they're on a Medicare Advantage plan, and they're telling you a bunch of rules or what to do. And that's a big point of confusion. So if we could figure out which situation you're in for you, and we can do that individually when we meet with you, then this whole explanation of this whole map tends to make more sense.

Yeah, absolutely. Because, you know, for me, I know I am on regular Medicare. That's what I chose to do, because I wanted my own doctors.

And we'll get into some of those details of why I chose that. But nonetheless, since I'm on regular Medicare, and since I'm on a Medicare supplement, the annual enrollment fee program, excuse me, the annual enrollment program really has nothing to do with my regular Medicare, but it does have to do with my drug plan. Correct. So now, all of a sudden, if you're on original Medicare, Part A and Part B, which you are, and you have a supplement, which you have, and many people do have that, you still have a little bit to do with annual enrollment period, because your Part D plan is coming up for annual enrollment.

Okay. And you don't really have to do anything, because you could just, your plan will automatically renew. So you could just sleep right through this whole thing. But what you may want to do, and I know what you're going to do, but if there's somebody like you out there, is you may want to have us take a look at your particular drug plan and see if it's working the best for you, where there might be making a change. And you have the opportunity to do that from October 15th to December 7th. Everybody on Medicare can do that. And then the change will take effect January 1st. While you're doing that, comparing drug plans, you can also take a look at your Medicare supplement and see if a change in that to a different company might save you a bunch of money. But you don't have to do that during this October 15th to December 7th.

This is a big misconception. A lot of people think that they can't change their Medicare supplement during this period, and that's not correct. We can change that any time of year, the Medicare supplement.

It's only the drug plan that has to be done during this period. But as is actually the case for me, which I'm sure we'll get to here on the other side of the break, is I've been actually kind of looking forward to the annual enrollment period because I've been studying this thing, and I think I can save some money and probably not hurt my personal healthcare situation by switching to America Advantage and saving some money. And so we've got a whole lot coming up on this map of Medicare today. And again, since we're talking about Medicare, it's all there in Hans' book, The Complete Cardinal Guide to Planning for and Living in Retirement, which he's already mentioned at cardinalguide.com is where you can find out about that. And of course, we want to recommend that video on Medicare that just was released there at Cardinal Advisors on YouTube.

So now we'll be right back with a whole lot more on this map for Medicare. 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.

Welcome back to Finishing Well with Certified Financial Planner, Hans Scheil. On today's show, we're talking Medicare 101, the map kind of itself. And so to jive into, you know, what's on the board of this video is really kind of critical information, Hans, right?

Well, it absolutely is. So Medicare has four parts to it. Part A, which is hospital.

Part B, which is doctor and outpatient. And part B pays 80% of your expenses. Then it has part C, which is just another way of receiving the benefits that you get under part A and part B. So if you're on part C, it's called a Medicare Advantage plan. And what it is, it's with a private insurance company. So you're no longer getting your insurance or your Medicare insurance directly from the government. You're receiving it by your election from a private insurance company, like Humana or UnitedHealthcare or Aetna or Cigna or Blue Cross, somebody like that. And you get all your benefits, and then you get some added benefits. And then there's part D, and D is the drug plan.

And if you're on a Medicare Advantage part C plan, most of those include a drug plan. So when we left everybody, we were talking about, we need to figure out, or you need to figure out where you're at. And I'm just making a joke that's ending a sentence in a preposition.

My grandmother would be very upset with me. But, you know, where you're at. So we discussed before the break, where you're at, Robbie, is you're on original Medicare part A and part B. Then you have a separate Medicare supplement policy, which I sold you about a year ago, with Mutual of Omaha. And it's a plan G. And you pay a little over $100 a month, but you probably just got a rate increase on that.

I did. And so you have original Medicare part A and part B, and then you have the supplement. And then you also purchase a separate standalone part D plan, D for drugs, and prescription drugs, which you pay about $15, $20 a month for, and that pays toward your prescription drugs. And if there's any part of the whole game that you possibly have some difficulties under that arrangement, it is under the part D drug plan. Because next Saturday, the radio show is going to be about the part D drug plans, and we're going to dig into those specifically. But for your purposes, where you're at is you've got part A, part B, original Medicare, plus a supplement, plus a standalone part D drug plan. And this annual enrollment period, which is coming up October 15th to December 7th, you have the right to do a number of things based upon where you are. Number one, you could change to a different drug plan, if you so desired. And we have many people that call in right in, we get on the phone, and we just take whatever plan they have now, look at their drugs, and then look at everything else available.

Some of them make a change. Or you could do nothing, and everything would just continue sailing into next year. So that's one option during this period. The other option that you have is you could make an election to go and leave original Medicare, part A and part B, and to elect to go on part C Medicare Advantage plan. And you can choose from a list of those companies that I named earlier, maybe even a few more. And we can go through and look at your doctors, look at the networks, look at the drug plans that they tack onto those.

And I have a feeling that's what we're going to do for you, because you said that you have a desire to do that. And if you make that change, effective at the end of the year, the beginning of the new year, you'll dump your Medicare supplement. You have to dump your Medicare supplement. And you'll also dump the 120 bucks a month or so that you're paying for.

Right. But there's other advantages that are smaller. But there's a dental plan, there's a possibility of a payback of some, depending on the plan I look at.

So it has all kinds of options that at least I'm going to explore. Oh yeah, well, and it throws in a drug plan. And most of these, or many of these Medicare Advantage plans have a zero premium.

And I get a lot of people say, well, how can they do that? Well, the way they can do that is they're getting a check behind the scenes every month from the government to take Robbie off their hands. I mean, because they now, if you change to UnitedHealthcare, UnitedHealthcare is getting a big check every month to take you on. And then they provide Medicare to you with lower deductibles and lower copayments than you have on Original Medicare.

And they're doing that at zero premium to Robbie. In some of them, they actually have a giveback of your Part B premium. So, but I don't want to get too focused on any of these extras because what that does is, you know, the extra tail shouldn't wave the Medicare Advantage dog.

I mean, we've got to look at the whole picture and what's best for you. But, so we figured out where you're at and where you can possibly go. Now, the next place that many of you are probably already there is you're on a Medicare Advantage plan already.

You've been on one. And you have an opportunity to do several things October 15th to December 7th and during this annual enrollment period. And one of those things is you could just change from the Medicare Advantage plan you're on that includes a drug plan and some extra benefits. You could change from that to another one of them. I mean, you could go from UnitedHealthcare AARP to Humana or you could go from Humana to Aetna.

I mean, we can sit down and look at all of them, look at the networks, look at the extra benefits, and then you could make an election to change from this to that. And that's a once a year thing. It would take effect January 1st. And so, I think where people get confused is they're listening to all these messages and some of them don't apply to them or what their desires are to do and they get all hung up on it, such as they think they can only change their Medicare supplement during this time of year. And the Medicare supplement itself doesn't have anything to do with this annual enrollment period October 15th to December 7th.

And now, whether you'd want to do all those things is really kind of depending on your personal situation. And then what we work on doing, and I do that in my video, is there's pluses to being on a Medicare Advantage plan and leaving original Medicare, and then there's negatives to doing that and vice versa. There's pluses to being on original Medicare plus a supplement, and there's negatives. And one of the negatives is paying that premium for that Medicare supplement.

We have many clients that have been on a supplement for the last 15 years and they haven't had anything to do with Medicare Advantage, but their supplement premium has now gotten to be 300 bucks a month or 270 a month. And they say, you know, I'm ready to look at a switch. Well, now this is the time you can do that.

I want to make this easy on people. Like if you would like our consulting or one of my representatives, we just have 11 of us here at Cardinal, and I'm one of the 11. But if you want to make it a little bit easy on us and move to the front of the line, you could do a couple of things. One, you could go on cardinalguide.com and you could just type us a message under the messaging thing. You could say, this is who I am. This is what my email address is. This is what my phone number is. If you don't want to give us your phone number, just put your email address.

And then if you want to go a little further, you could tell us all the drugs you're on, all the prescription drugs, and you could tell us the name of your doctors, and then put a little bit about what you've got on your mind. And, or you could email that to haunts at cardinalguide.com. And I sure I get reading, I'll get all my emails. And then we will respond to you by email, and then set up a time to talk if that's what you want to do. Or you could just give us a call.

I mean, if you want to give us a call, and just do all that over the phone, go for it. Yeah, and you know, for me, you know, when I'm getting back to what we originally talked about, like to boil this down, what Jesus did from 613 to is love the Lord your God, and your neighbor as yourself, is to say that in my destination, as I'm looking at this, that the number one priority for me is my health care, right? And I think that's where people get hung up on all the little digits and gadgets and realize at the end of the day, you know, if I get sick and whatever, these things, you know, have got big consequences as to my actual health, right haunts?

Well, they do. And I think to go back to the to the scripture and the biblical, the biblical, where we talked in the beginning, is that I think that people lose sight of what you just said. I mean, so why are you listening to this radio show? Why do I mess with Medicare?

Why do I do all this? Why do I talk about these nuances? And it's, you got to keep an eye on the big picture. You want to have good health care, access to good care. You don't want to go broke using it. You want to have a good drug plan that allows you to get the drugs that you need. And you don't want to have a huge premium that's, you know, that's taking food off your table. So, I mean, that's the goal for people. And you want to have some peace of mind and not sit and worry like a health thing is going to break up. And I think that the connection to the references is where Jesus just boiled it down to two commandments.

And, you know, these two commandments as opposed to just hanging up on the 613. Darrell Bock Right. And as you were saying that, I was thinking about this friend of mine that you and I both know. And almost every time I talk to her, and she's a widow, and it breaks my heart because she says, well, I'm afraid to go to the doctor because I don't have the money for the deductible. And all those things are affected by what she chose in this very area, right?

Dr. John Baxter Well, that's correct. I mean, so she has the deductibles and copayments on her Medicare Advantage plan. And without any more information, I can just assume that she's going to a network, an in-network doctor. But maybe she's not. Maybe she's gotten lined up with a Medicare Advantage plan, and she's going to a doctor outside the network. That's what a lot of the out-of-pocket is.

But even if she's going to a network doctor, that's something she could face, and it's something she made a decision on years ago, and she's living with it now. Darrell Bock And so this is exactly, you know, where we want the dog to wag the tail, you know, this annual enrollment period is a perfect time if you're facing those kind of concerns. Like, the most important thing is your health, right, and you being able to live life. And that's what these things are for. So this is, it's a really good time to check your map, right, Hans? Dr. John Baxter Well, it is. And you don't really have to study this stuff to the point where you know it so well that you know exactly what you want and what you want to do.

I mean, frankly, most people never do. And if you just give us a call, that's what we're here for. We can help you figure out, you know, where you're at, okay? And if you want to go ahead and tell us a little bit of that, if you come into us with an email, or just get a lot of people emailing me now. It's very convenient for me, and it's good for them.

It's not as threatening making a phone call. And just go ahead and tell me, you know, if your card says like, Plan G on it or Plan N, from that I can tell where you are, because you're on Original Medicare, Part A, Part B, and you're on a supplement. And then most likely, you have a separate drug plan, Part D drug plan. And if you could tell me what that is as well, or be ready to tell me that, if you call in, we can get you in the right place.

If you're on a Medicare Advantage plan, then your Part D plan card is going to be the same as your health insurance card. It's just going to say Humana on it, or UnitedHealthcare. So that's the first thing we're going to do with anybody, is figure out where you are. And then from there, we're going to explain it to you a little bit, and then talk to you what your options are. Right. And having a, you know, here's where I'm struggling, or here's what I want to, you know, in my case, I'm just trying to save money.

But I don't want to do it at the cost of not, you know, having my health. So you could see it's a wonderful time of year for those kind of things as we head into October. And again, all this information is there available at cardinalguide.com, which is Hans' book, The Complete Cardinal Guide to Planning for and Living in Retirement, as well as it's pretty easy to click and email Hans right there from his website. Or if you go on YouTube, you can see this whole video that Hans has done on Medicare that they recently released under Cardinal Advisors.

And so, great time today, Hans. Thank you so much for sharing all this information. Thank you. Finishing Well is a general discussion and education of the issues facing retirees. cardinalguide.com, Cardinal Advisors, and Hans Shile, CFP, sell insurance.

This show does not offer investment products or investment advice. 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. This is the Truth Network.