2024 Medicare Parts A & B Premiums & Deductibles

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This is the Truth Network. 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, IRAs, long-term care, life insurance, investments, and taxes.

Now, let's get started with Finishing Well. Well, welcome to Finishing Well, with certified financial planner, Hans Scheil, and today's show, how fun, 2024 Medicare Parts A and B premiums and deductibles. Again, the government's come out with these new rates and information, and so we want to give you an update there, and it fits right into what I was going to talk about today, which, you know, Proverbs 19—well, obviously all Proverbs are helpful, but Proverbs 19 2 on this subject is really helpful to me.

As I was thinking about the video that's on the same subject, it says, essentially, that it's not good for a soul to be without knowledge, and he sins who hastens with his feet. And so it's not good when you don't know this stuff, but it's even worse if you go making decisions when you don't have all the information. And so it's really one of the fundamental reasons, I believe, that Hans and Tom spend so much time trying to get you information so you can make better decisions, you have better options, because this stuff becomes really critical when it comes to Medicare, I can tell you, having been with two real sick people that passed on and saw the difference based on decisions that they made on this very subject of, essentially, Medicare parts A, B, C, D. It's alphabet soup, right, Hans?

Well, it is. And so let's just talk about people that are on their way in to becoming clients with us, or at least they're seeking information from us. And I learn a lot about how I need to make the shows just based upon my experience and people's knowledge coming in the door. And the government doesn't make it easy with this stuff. And, you know, you just when you when you say it's confusing, a lot of it is confusing by the way the information came to is, most people don't sit down and take a course in Medicare before they start talking to salespeople. And that would be real helpful.

And that's what my videos kind of do. And they give people a chance to learn a little bit without having a salesperson just kind of stuck in your face trying to sign you up for their version of it. And so let's do a little remedial learning here is with original Medicare, that which started back in 1965. You have Part A, which is the hospital coverage, and you have Part B, which is the doctor and outpatient. So Medicare is broken up into those two parts, inpatient hospital, and then outpatient and outpatient surgery, tests, anything where you're not a bit in inpatient in the hospital is going to fall under Part B, which is a lot of the expense these days. And if you're on Medicare, you're on Part A and Part B.

Now, what many people choose to do, and they don't even know they're doing it is they turn their Part A hospital Part B doctor into a Medicare Advantage plan into a Part C Medicare Advantage plan. So and what that really does is the government is outsourcing by your election, I mean, you're telling them, I want you to outsource my Medicare to Humana, or I want you to outsource my Medicare to United Health Care to United Health Care. And so when you pick this plan, like you pick one of those United Health Care, okay, well, they're now going to be delivering your Medicare to you. And they're going to be collecting a check every month from the government that's paying for the outsourcing on your behalf.

And they offer a range of benefits. But you're not on original Medicare anymore, you're on a Medicare Advantage plan. And a lot of people think that that's that is Medicare, and I guess in a way it is.

But that's the only thing they know. And then that includes most of those Part C Medicare Advantage plans include a Part D drug plan. Okay, so I guess effectively, that's the only way you can be on all four parts of Medicare is, but you got part of the hospital, you got Part B doctor, but then you turned it into a Part C. So it's still there supporting the whole thing, but you're not collecting benefits off it. You're on Part C. And that includes a Part D most of the time.

So I mean, saying all that you don't have a supplement, if that's your case. And I'm telling you that when I asked people that are already past 65 that are just coming in in the door, and I asked them what they're on, or, you know, kind of my old buddy, you know, where are you at ending a sentence with a preposition. They have a hard time telling me until they get their card out, and I read it. And I can tell real quick whether they're on a Medicare Advantage plan, or they're on original Medicare plus a supplement. So I don't want to drone on and on. We've got several shows about that.

But if you don't know the difference between a Medicare Advantage plan, Part C, and original Medicare and a supplement, which many times is called Plan G or Plan N, if you don't know the difference between those two routes, you need to get yourself educated on where you're at. Okay. Yeah, because, as both my wife and I have experienced this year, like never before, is, man, the phone calls are coming, coming, coming, coming, like they just never have, and they have figured out, you know, how to get them to you without being spam. In other words, they used to say, spam, you just knew you didn't take that call. But now, like, they figured out that because when phone numbers come out of Asheboro, I'll answer them because I'm a pastor in Asheboro, and I don't know all the phone numbers everybody calls me.

So guess what happens? A lot of the times, the numbers coming out of Asheboro because they know I'll answer them somehow. They know that. They're people wanting to sell me Medicare Advantage, and as if I don't know anything about it, it's crazy.

Oh, it is. And the marketing around this is unbelievable. And so when we, when I think about it, is the marketing is really the only education that a lot of people get. Is that, and they talk to their friends and neighbors, people that are turning 65 and coming up on Medicare.

Of course, you're going to talk to your former co-workers, you're going to talk to somebody that's a little older than you and on Medicare, and you ask them what they have. And there's a lot of people out there that explain it. Oh, man, it's great. I've had it, you know, and then another friend has it. And then you just say, I want exactly what Sally has.

And I have people come into me that are even referrals from us. And they say, well, I want same thing Sally's got. You just put me on that. And I'm like, well, you're not Sally. So how about if we start over at square one and make sure what Sally has is going to be appropriate for you.

Will that work? So most people don't ever get an education in this beyond what the salesperson that's trying to sell them is shown. So, you know, with that being said, every year in 2024, Medicare for the next, for the upcoming year, they usually do this in October is they put out what the new deductibles, copayments, part B deductible, part A deductible, they talk about part B premiums, the Irma, the extra charge, all that stuff changes and has inflation adjustments to it.

And that's what really the crux of the show is to go over that. But if I just rattle those off, or you've read some articles about it, they don't really mean much to you because a lot of people have a hard time figuring out what applies and what doesn't apply to them, depending on how they receive their Medicare. Most of the changes affect original Medicare part A hospital and part B doctor. So if you're on a Medicare Advantage plan, the only thing that is these changes affect you is your part B premium, that number they take out of your social security check is going to go from 160, almost 165 a month, 164.90, it's going to go from there to 174.70 per month. So you're going to get about a nine to $10 increase in your premium for part B. And that in itself was confusing to me, like, wait a minute, I've got to pay every month for Medicare? I mean, I really, you know, as I came into this with just no knowledge, and I really didn't have any, and so I don't pay for my part A, but I have to pay a hundred and, you know, at that time, it was $161 or whatever, but now it's up to 174 for my Medicare.

Whether you're on a Medicare Advantage or you're on regular Medicare, that number is relevant to everybody. And yes, you have to pay it. And if you're not on social security, they're going to take it out. You're going to have to pay it, you know, direct deposit or something.

Oh, you are. And, you know, that's a cost, whether you go on Medicare Advantage or you stay on original Medicare, that's something you have to pay. Now, if you're low income, they have ways to waive that cost, but I'm talking about very low income and I can direct you to there, the low income subsidy, different things that goes on. And if you're high income, it's going to be way more than 174.70 a month.

So that's just the tip of the iceberg. The high income people that pay under Irma can pay five, 600 bucks a month for the same thing you pay 174.70. So it's the consumer, which is you, or the Medicare beneficiary that's having to pay for part of your Medicare. And I can tell you that 174.70 doesn't come near the cost of what the government actually pays out on part B just for you. I mean, on average, I mean, you could be real healthy and never collect much out of this, but that's just a part of the cost 174.70, but it's the part you have to pay. So we just know that that went up almost 10 bucks a month. And you can kind of count on that every year. And so that eats up a little piece of your social security increase.

Or if you have a very low check, it could almost eat up most of it, but that's what you got to pay. Well, we got to go to a break again, I'm afraid. But we were going to give you all that information, believe me, a whole bunch. Again, with knowledge, you'll have more resources to make better decisions. And that comes available at cardinalguide.com. If you go to cardinalguide.com, there you've got the Seven Worries tab, which today is on Medicare, which is a great one to study. And that's where I really would suggest reading Hans' book, The Complete Cardinal Guide to Planning for and Living Retirement. In about 14, 20 pages, you will get such an education on Medicare. So, so, so helpful for me. And again, it's The Complete Cardinal Guide to Planning for and Living Retirement. It's there at cardinalguide.com, as well as, of course, all this show, the show notes, the YouTube video from Cardinal Advisors, all that is right there at cardinalguide.com. Of course, we'll be right back with so much more of this information, with much more finishing well with Hans.

Joe Well, welcome back to Finishing Well with Certified Financial Planner, Hans Scheil. And today's show, we're talking about the 2024 Medicare Parts A and B premiums and deductibles, which that's a whole mouthful, but it's kind of neat to me that every year the government makes these changes. And we want to get to this information because the more knowledge you have, the easier it is to have the decision-making process. And these decisions are gigantic decisions from my perspective. When I look at what's underlying this, Hans, really, I can go on record and say that my mother-in-law passed with well over, I'm going to say over $150,000 in medical expenses that were not paid for by Medicare with a similar amount of hospital time to my father who passed with a Medicare supplement and had no indebtedness from that as he passed. And so they're big decisions if you get bad sick, especially bad sick for a while.

Yeah. I've known this all along, all through the Medicare Advantage era, which I've sold Medicare Advantage to a lot of people. But never without an explanation of all the facts. And we walk everybody that comes through the door, even if they've heard the pitch a hundred times, we're going to walk them through what I went through in the first part of the show is an understanding of part A, part B, part C, part D, and how it all breaks down, how it plays out. And then we're going to discuss the advantages of staying on original Medicare, not going the Advantage route. And then if you do that, we're going to talk about buying a Medicare supplement plan G. And so to save people all the detail of going through every one of these numbers without a visual aid, I'm just going to put it to you this way is if you have the plan G supplement, it's going to absorb all these increases it does every year because they're small and the plan G supplement pays all of your hospital deductible. It pays your copay from the 61st to the 90th day. It pays your copay from the 91st to the 150th day in the hospital. And then when Medicare runs out after 150 days in the hospital, the Medicare supplement gives you a whole nother 365 days of coverage. So it wraps around part A extremely well and it just pays what it doesn't pay. So going around these, going through these increases isn't really going to do you a lot of good if you're committed to just follow what we directed by a supplement to fill in the gaps.

Okay? Well, the two that, you know, again jumped out at me because, you know, based on my Hans' education, I immediately went, okay, well, I know I'm going to be paying this $174. So I knew that was going up $9 a month and I was like, aha. And then, but there's also that one deductible that even if you have a plan G, right, you got to pay it one time a year and that went up 14 bucks.

Right. It used to be in 2023, it's $226 under part B, the deductible. Now it's in 2024, it's going to be $240. And that means the first $240 of doctor and outpatient expenses in the calendar year on you. And then after that, you got 80% of your expenses paid by Medicare, 80% of the approved expenses. You got 20% of the approved expenses paid by the plan G supplement. And then if there's anything that was approved, but it was an excess charge, your plan G supplements going to pay that too. So you summarized it real well, Robbie, that for you being on a supplement, you're going to have a $9 a month increase in your part B that they're going to take out of your social security check. And then you're going to have actually a $14 a year increase in the part B deductible that you have to pay every January and February or whenever you go to the doctor for the first time. But other than that, I mean, the coverage for having part A and part B and then a plan G supplement is just phenomenal.

You go to any doctor, you don't have to look at a network, as long as they take Medicare, you're in. And so this is really kind of a non-event what we're talking about, but it raises a lot of stuff in the press. People read about this, they don't understand it.

So we're just, we're talking about it today. And so if you're one of those folks, and I was last year, I was on a Medicare Advantage program, for you, you're still making the premium on your part B, so you are getting that $9 a month increase, even if you're on Medicare Advantage. But the other deductibles don't apply to you, but I would ask you to seriously consider some of the other information, other videos that we've done on this subject, because as I just explained, I've seen the consequences of Medicare Advantage when people get bad sick, and there's all sorts of things that we've done, videos and all that kind of thing. So the more knowledge you can get on this particular thing, you know, it's a phenomenally, the whole reason you have insurance of any kind, and we've talked about this many times, right, Hans? The reason you have insurance is when you get bad sick. And so this is a serious matter and something to take a lot of knowledge and consideration doing.

And everybody isn't Sally, right, Hans? So you know, to me, calling way down 1-800-HANS to really see what does fit best for you and your situation is really good advice. Well, yeah, and so we want to treat everybody as individuals, and you know, in my own personal situation, I'm going the supplement route. I mean, my wife had a pretty serious sickness a couple of years ago, and you know, we marched over to Duke Cancer Center and just quickly and wanted to go to the best, you know, right away and I was thankful that it was on our network of our under 65 insurance. And also I was just looking at what if you had a Medicare Advantage Planner?

We had it and Duke wasn't on the network. I mean, that's a problem or what if she, like Tom, who's on the radio a lot, he went up to the Mayo Clinic for something. He's got this rare condition that just the doctor said you need to go up there. With a Medicare supplement and original Medicare, you don't need to worry about that. And so this decision was pretty easy for me. Now I'm going to tell you, I don't have dental through this, like you get on a lot of the Medicare Advantage Plans and we own separate private paid dental insurance, which we can offer to anybody that wants to look at it. I do have the gym membership on my Plan G supplement and there's a couple companies but one in particular that we can get you with and then you can use their gym membership, which I use every other day. But you know, don't pick your health insurance by the gym membership and the dental insurance and the free grocery plan or whatever. I mean, that's just, if you can seriously pick it for how it's going to treat you if you get seriously sick. You know, and I saw it because there's all these little things that you don't necessarily think about, right, when you're looking at a Medicare Advantage Plan and of course, if the people are selling Medicare Advantage, then that's the information they've got.

They don't necessarily, they haven't experienced it, they're usually young people, right? And they're being told what it is to talk to you about and they're not going to talk to you about that, oh my goodness, when you get really sick like my mother-in-law was to you how many ambulance rides she took and every one of those ambulance rides, it was going ka-ching, ka-ching, ka-ching and oh my goodness, I mean, and the Medicare Advantage wasn't paying because it was under whatever threshold, you know, they weren't paying and that her particular plan wasn't paying any of that and so those things just mounted and mounted as well as the emergency room visits and all those things, every single one of them, you know, was another whack that there were just no resources for and so, you know, like what we talk about is there's all these details that you don't think about and the reason why everybody is not Sally is that, you know, for some people, it's their medications are crazy expensive and they need a Part D plan that fits their particular medications and when you're on a med supplement, you've got a lot more flexibility, right, Hans, on that? So you have to pay for the Medicare Part D but you get to choose from a whole group and sometimes if you're sitting here listening, we sell a lot of Medicare Advantage plans all over the country. We're in 50 states in the District of Columbia and we're licensing all them and we got the plans and a lot of people buy especially this time of year when it's annual enrollment season so don't be thinking you're going to get a complete biased thing with us. I mean, we're going to get you signed up for what we think and you think is appropriate for you and that can include Medicare Advantage. We're just showing you that if you can afford it and you value how you're going to get paid off when you're seriously sick, then you may want to look at staying on Original Medicare and buying a supplement plan. Yeah. Yeah, because clearly, you know, in our case, because of budgetary restrictions, there was times where Medicare Advantage really, really worked out well for us. But again, eyes were open to the details of what all was involved even though it wasn't for us personally.

We watched it and we learned like there's a lot of information here and so that's why I think that the knowledge here is so important and I'm so grateful for what you teach on it, Hans. Yeah, that's awesome. I mean, I can tell you this, when I turned 65 this summer and I went off of basic health insurance that I purchased for all my employees here, including myself, I was paying over $1,000 a month just for my part of the under 65 health insurance and we had like a $2,000 deductible at that and I was very thankful to have it because it's just hard to get that stuff. But when I turned 65, I went on Medicare and I'm paying like 130 bucks a month for my Plan G. I'm paying the $174.70 for the Part B premium. I'm paying for my dental insurance for my part of that, let's just say is 100 bucks a month. I've got a pretty beefed up plan and I get the gym membership that I could get on the Medicare Advantage. I get that on my Plan G. And I ought to pay Irma, too. I'm paying that for the high income thing.

But it's still way less than $1,000 a month and it's tons better coverage. So Oh, absolutely. Well, again, we've run out of time. Before we ran out of show, we want to remind you it's cardinalguide.com. This show is brought to you by cardinalguide.com where you're going to find the Seven Worries tab. Today's show is under the Medicare Worries. But of course, the contact Hans or Tom Page is there at cardinalguide.com. Don't miss that. As well as we talked about the complete cardinal guide to planning for and living in retirement. So thanks, Hans. Great show. Thank you.

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