There are only 3 Medicare supplement plans that are worth purchasing in 2023 in my opinion. If you were not eligible for Plan F or Medigap high deductible F prior to 2020.
There are only three plans that I would get on for Medicare, this is whether you’re turning 65 and going on Medicare for the first time or whether you’re on Medicare now and you’re thinking about switching your plan.
My name is Brian Monahan, I’ve been working with people going on to Medicare and people on Medicare for the past 15 plus years and in my videos I’d like to show you the raw data about different plans so you can understand which plan is best for you.
So let’s jump into the numbers now. A lot of people ask me, “Why only three plans?” Well, number one I always tell people, in my opinion, you should always get on a gap plan when you first sign up for Medicare. The reason being is you can always go to a Medicare Advantage plan but with a medigap
plan, you do not have underwriting when you first go on to Medicare in your initial enrollment period. This enables you to get on one of these plans to see if you like it, but if you dislike it, you can switch to another supplemental plan.
You can always go to a Medicare Advantage plan from a Medicare supplement F plan, but if you get on a Medicare Advantage plan during your initial enrollment period when you start Medicare part B, you only have up to one year to switch to a Medigap plan without underwriting. Then, you might not be able to get on a gap plan for the rest of your time on Medicare. Unless the laws change, that’s the way that it is. Number two, the Medigap plans are taken throughout the entire country, by any doctor or hospital that takes Original Medicare Part A and Part B. You don’t ever have to ask a doctor, “Do you take my Plan G or Plan N. The only question you have to ask your doctor or hospital is, “Do you accept original Medicare, that’s it!
So let’s jump into the numbers. The very first plan that I want to talk about of course is the Medicare supplement Plan G. This is the most comprehensive plan that you can get on and it’s also the most popular plan. I actually spoke to someone from Alaska yesterday. I speak to people from California all the time; Arizona, Michigan, North Carolina, Florida, New York, everywhere. I speak to them about these three plans but it always goes back to Medigap Plan G. So let’s talk about Plan G. The Plan G typical premium is going to run about $140 a month. This is for someone who’s 65 years old, but I’ve also looked up zip codes
throughout the country especially in the Midwest and Texas and so forth and I’ve seen that even someone who’s 70 years old can be paying $140 a month for this plan G.
Now, as far as the companies go, there’s a ton of different companies. There’s probably about 30 companies in your area, but I’m not going to get into the insurance companies because Plan G is the same throughout every single company. The company name whether it is AARP or Aetna, it really doesn’t matter; you just want to go over the plan. If United Healthcare and Cigna have different prices for the Medigap plan G, think about a silver sneaker or Silver and Fit gym membership.
Now what do you get with this $140 a month? You get the hospital coverage at zero dollars, which means you will pay nothing when you go into the hospital if you have a surgery. Anything that has to do with inpatient you’re going to pay zero. The only thing that you will pay with this plan and I have it under doctor right here is $226 for the year as a deductible. I usually just tell people to just tie this $226 into your $140 a month. What I mean by that is just
add $18 or $20 to this premium per month so let’s just say $160 and that’s all you will pay for inpatient and outpatient services.
This means doctors, CAT scans, skilled nursing for up to a hundred days, ambulance, blood work, specialists, physical therapy. I mean I could go on and on but it’s all your inpatient and outpatient services.
This plan is just like the other three plans. The other two plans follow Medicare so whenever someone accepts Medicare they will accept your plan G and the only thing you will pay are these two things; your premium and your $226 per year.
Now I’m going to go over the drug plan and the dental vision and hearing right now before I get into Plan N. So with the drug plan, (when you get any one of these plans G, N or high deductible G), you get a separate Part D prescription drug plan. A lot of people call and they ask me about Part B and Part A and
so forth. So part A is just your hospital, Part B is your doctor or outpatient services and then C would be your Advantage Plans. Part D would be your drug plan. You take your Medicare part A and B card that you get from the government, then you attach a supplemental Plan G,
Plan N or High Deductible G. You choose a company such as United Healthcare, Aetna or AARP, then you will choose a drug plan. You’ll possibly want a dental vision and hearing plan to package it all together. It sounds complicated, it’s really not.
You get your Medicare A and B card let’s just say then you get a plan N, then you get your drug plan. You choose whether you want a dental, vision, hearing plan and then you’re finished! The drug plans range from five dollars to thirty five dollars. I didn’t really get into the drug plans on some of my other videos, so I’m just going to take a minute to go into it.
I hear this a lot, ‘I take two drugs and they’re both generic. I take a blood pressure drug such as benazepril and I take levothyroxine and cholesterol simvastatin or atorvastatin.” If you’re taking these tier one generics you can get a plan that’s between five and ten dollars a month and your drugs are going to most likely be either a dollar or two dollars per month when you go to the pharmacy. The cheapest plan out there is around five dollars for the month so you just add this to the premium.
If you have those cheap generics most likely they will be like two dollars copayment out of pocket each time you go to the CVS or Walgreens pharmacy to get them. If you have higher expensive drugs what we do is we punch in your drugs into medicare.gov and and pick your drug plan. You put in your different drugs like levothyroxine or atorvastatin and it tells you which plan is best for you.
Next you have your dental, vision and hearing. None of these top 3 Medicare supplement plans cover it, you’ll have to get it separately. Now you do not have to get a dental, vision, hearing plan. Some people opt out of that. They
say, “ I don’t need it. I’ll just pay out of pocket or I’ll get one when I need one.” There’s no open enrollment period for dental, vision, or hearing so it’s the last thing that you have to worry about. I just put in here they’re about forty dollars a month for dental, vision and hearing insurance combined. The thing about this is the Medicare Advantage plans group all of these things together but that doesn’t mean you’re getting a great drug plan with that Advantage plan. A lot of times I’ve heard people say, “ I like this plan but the drugs are hurting me, you know they’re expensive!” and the same thing with the dentist or vision and hearing, especially dental insurance.
A lot of people complain that when they’re on the Medicare Advantage they can’t use their dentist, well with this you can choose any plan you want so you want to call your dentist first and ask, “Which medicare dental plans do you take?” So that’s the plan G. It’s very clean, very smooth, pay your premium you pay your 226 dollar deductible and then you’re finished!
You get all these things inpatient outpatient and you get
skilled nursing up to a hundred days which is fantastic! Most of the Medicare Advantage you only get 20 days for skilled nursing. CAT scans would be zero after the $226 part b deductible.
Okay, let’s move on to Plan N. Plan N works almost the same as Plan G. The premium is usually about thirty five dollars less a month. I did an average throughout the entire country. Medicare Plan N insurance with companies such as Medico or Humana was around $106 a month.
Depends on your age and so forth, but this is what I came up with and with this you still pay nothing going to the hospital or inpatient which is fantastic! People always worry about the big ticket items when it comes to Medicare, especially when I talk to people and they’re like worried about dental or something, that’s the last thing you want to worry about. The major things are your hospital and
skilled nursing and these big big ticket items that could cost you $295 dollars a day or something like that
and in the hospital. You pay zero with this Medigap plan N insurance coverage and only thing that you would possibly pay for is a $50
emergency room fee. If you go to the emergency room and you’re admitted into the hospital they waive that fee but other than that you pay nothing in the hospital.
The doctor’s office or outpatient center such as urgent care you will pay that $226 dollar deductible for Part B (this also goes for outpatient centers and
urgent care) you pay that $226 just like Plan G, but then you have to pay up to twenty dollars each time you go to the doctor or specialist. I have talked to people throughout the entire country in places like Tampa Florida and Jacksonville Florida about this and some people say my doctor does not charge me. A lot of doctors in West Chester or Havertown Pennsylvania don’t want to deal with it, they’ll just take medicare’s payment and let their clients be.
Outpatient centers and physical therapy would be up to $20 so then I put CAT scan at zero. CAT scans and MRIs of course are outpatient visits so you know once you finish this $226 they could possibly charge you up to twenty dollars. Skilled nursing is same thing but that’s inpatient most of the time so if you’re inpatient it would work somewhat like the hospital and you would still get that 100 days. I did the math down here plan n your premium let me put this up here your premium 106 times 12 would be 1272. you add that
One thing I have to tell you about the Medigap Plan N, is it does have an excess
charge attached to it. I always say less than two percent of the doctors in the entire country charge an excess charge but they can charge up to
15 % on top of your bill if you do not accept medicare’s payment.
I have hundreds and hundreds of people on plan and I have never heard any of them say I got charged in excess charge. That doesn’t mean it never happens out there but less than two percent is really really low.
So next up would be the High Deductible G. Of course we always look at the max out of pocket over here and you see wow this one seems to be more expensive than the other ones for the year. Well what I did here was I took the premium of about forty dollars now this premium I have talked to so many people this open enrollment it seems that the premium is around forty dollars for most people whether they’re 70 years old 65 so I came up with this premium of forty dollars per month.
Now the thing about the high deductible plan g is it’s just like the Plan G except for it has this High deductible of $ 2,700 for the year.
I talk to a lot of people about this High deductible plan F or HDG plan and a lot of people at the end get kind of spooked from this plan. The United American insurance company and Aetna have this HDG plan.
Many insurance companies such as Cigna or Lumico might have the Medicare supplement high deductible g insurance plan. They can also have the medigap plan f or high deductible plan F. United American High deductible plan G in Florida is one of the best plans.
Disclaimer: This video and blog post are for entertainment purposes only. If you want advice on Medicare or any of its plans, please speak to a licensed agent, whether it is me or another licensed agent. No advice should be taken from this video or blog post. If you don’t speak to me about your individual concerns, I can’t give you my 100% opinion. Brian Monahan and Medicare 365 are not responsible for any actions that you take without consulting with a licensed insurance agent.
