MEDICARE
Medicare is a health insurance program for; people over age 65, people under age 65 with certain disabilities and people of all ages with End-Stage Renal Disease (permanent kidney failure requiring dialysis or transplant).
Medicare has a part A and part B. Part A is hospital insurance; Part B is your medical insurance. Part A covers inpatient care (but not long-term care). This includes hospital stays, skilled nursing, some home health care, some hospice, and blood. Part B, which is the part we must pay for, carries a deductible but does out-of-hospital medical expenses to include doctors office visits, supplies, tests, equipment and other medical non-hospital expenses.
Enrolling in Part A. If you are getting benefits from SS or the Railroad Retirement Board you will automatically get Medicare Part A. Remember, this starts at age 65, even if you have not yet retired. Check with SS or the RRB.
Enrolling in Part B. My cost in 2005 is $78.20 a month and has a $110 deductible. It comes out of my SS check. These numbers change every year. You automatically get Part A because you have already paid for it through payroll deduction. Part B requires action on your part because it is an election. You may not need it because of other coverage. Your initial enrollment period begins three months before you are 65 and ends 3 months after you are age 65. If you wait to sign up till your birth month, coverage will be delayed. Do it early.
Now for the real story on how this system actually works. Since the coverage under Medicare is limited, additional coverage is highly recommended it is a called a "medigap policy". When this system came out originally, insurance companies created all kinds of supplemental coverage and people really didn’t understand the benefits. That meant they could not compare one coverage plan against another. The Government stepped in and created our current system. It works as follows. The Part A and B is followed by a series of letters to "L". The coverage benefits increase with each ascending letter from C to J, i.e. G is better than C, but G will cost more. When comparing providers, keep in the same letter group because the coverage is essentially the same. I was amazed by differences in cost from different providers. So, shop around. Go to: www.medicare.gov for the Medicare Web-Site. Select 'Plan Choices' and Medigap (Supplemental insurance) to get to Medigap Policy basics. At the bottom of that section is 'choosing a medigap policy'. Adobe PDF will bring up a 100 page booklet that tells all.
An overview of Medigap Plans A through J are on the following page. Plan K and L are on the next page and are a modified coverage which deserves your review.
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