Annual Enrollment: Medicare Supplements vs Medicare Advantage

Welcome to finishing well to you by Cardinal guy, certified financial planner Shiloh best-selling author and financial planner helping families finish well over 40 years of finishing well will examine both biblical and practical knowledge to assist families in finishing well, including discussions on managing Medicare IRA long-term care life insurance and investments and taxes.

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We have insights in the Medicare now that may not sound terribly interesting that the show finishing well is a certified financial planner on trial and in its brought you by the complete Cardinal God.

Now if you were to look on the front of their book. They show a picture of all things are Cardinal and his little nest of eggs. Fortunately for Cardinal he does not understand Medicare, which God gave him a within his DNA everything to finish well to be able to figure out how to take care of all those legs about math and how to finish well but inside our DNA.

God not give us all these insights in the Medicare but if by listening to the day I think you will not only find this fascinating. As I have over the last 10 minutes. What I've learned about Medicare blows my mind Medicare supplement. Some things along those lines that really God has given us the truth. In some cases, and that truth will set you free. And I really feel icons I've been set free to understand a little bit about Medicare. After this discussion. Great Medicare is important is can become important when you're 65 or over. And if you sit near listening in your same one at 65. It was this have to do with me. You take a look at this stuff for your parents or your in-laws or at least talk to them about it because they might be paying way more than they need to further Medicare supplement insurance guy and for me five years ago I bought I wouldn't have a clue what Medicare supplement insurance is but for those who are just here in this for the first time.

What is that mean Medicare supplement insurance you what it means is when you have Medicare you've got deductibles and copayments. We talked on the last show about part a part B, part C, part D, so were knocking to get in dollar that today and you go back and play that the last time. Or you can get my book if you want to get up on that zeroed in this time on Medicare supplement insurance. So what were talking about is an insurance policy to pay the gaps in Medicare sometimes is referred to as Medigap right to decide what I heard from my mother-in-law. Actually, that she would talk about this donut and I found myself in the doughnut.

It all incentive so to speak, but this is a fascinating subject.

And there's a lot to know that really doesn't take a lot to learn what doesn't. And so I said down here before the show and I said I'm going it.

Try to explain this to Robbie and I'm in a try to really good to see how long that takes and really taking perhaps to a deeper level than I think that the listener needs to get to even shopper by Medicare supplements which you don't what we did is I showed him in the book in the workbook on page 22 and by the way, you can download all the chapters of the book and the chapters in the workbook@mywebsitecardinalguy.com so you don't even have to buy the book to see this information. We give it away for free and so she got into the workbook. Download one Cardinal guy.com under Medicare. You go to page 22 and I had Robbie do that and were sitting here looking, and I explained to him on page 22 and page 23. The difference between an F plan energy plan. He and I don't want take up a whole bunch of time this morning with these policies are the same with every single company. So in other words, these were standardized clear back in 1990.

So if you got one of them if you got an F plan from one company and you got an F plan from another company were talking about exactly the same thing apples to apples in every single case, the coverage is identical.

This is even gala apples to gala me.

This is identical. It has to by law so easily. What's the difference why would I pick one. The prices can be radically different and we don't so much want to get into the pricing we can do that in my book. I do a little bit but what we thought of you little bit of him. He has as a lady by the name of Ruth apparently was 70 at the point she didn't smoke and he does all the stuff about roots that when I was is that he gives of these plan prices and for Ruth it was 70. I mean, in some cases it was more than double what you just as an example on page 22.

The least expensive health plan is $119.79 a month, and the most expensive offered in this example is $288.22 a month for exactly the same thing right and so here's the situation.

All of us have somebody we know, probably on Medicare and I'm aghast that they didn't know that there's this huge disparity in pricing but it they can easily switch policies, especially if they're in that window, which I think people need to know about this window because I didn't even know now the cargo might fly in your window, but this is a different window went well yeah so what will I will point out is is that just by looking at the pricing doesn't mean you're switching policies because people hold their Medicare supplement policies very near and dear even if the print too much for him to tell you why because Medicare and your supplement, especially if you have an F plan. It pays so well I mean you just you can go in for a $20,000 hospital bill in a $20,000 part be an outpatient doctor bill or a total bill of $40,000 in between Medicare and the supplement if you have the F plan. In many cases you own nothing out of pocket. Of course people are happy with that. And so this will draw them to just year after year after year pay too much for their supplement when they could cut their price substantially budget shopping at its it's really eye-opening.

And to think that wow you could open up some other financial resources to do other things. When you try to finish well. Just by looking at what might be available at least shopping and getting an understanding I'm Italian who finds out about this and who's the most angry about this.

Robbie, are the very well-to-do people because frankly they've got the money to pay 250 bucks a month for something they could get for hundred 25 they just have that in a military how they got there is, they responded somehow the one company salesperson got a hold of them and they were there. One company charges more than the market – and the salesperson sold it to them. Perhaps years ago and they been real happy with it, so they just have no need or really no desire to show in which you need to do is you need to find an independent agent somebody who represents several companies and uses a rating service like I use when I created this book and we make the rating service available to not just our customers with the anybody's all you listeners if you go to Cardinal guy.com and you going to the seven worries tab and you pick the Medicare worry and you click under that you'll find a rate calculator that just comes up you can put in your ZIP Code you gender where the smoker not well your married or not, and it'll calculator rate. It'll be something just like page 22 in the workbook same place you find the workbook chapter find that you know you have to sell CR so you can get a print out.

There may be some variance small variance in that, but it's going to give you the general idea and you can put in the plan. Your that you have now or you can just plug in F plan energy plan. I think it defaults to G. My point is you can see the spread like we have on page 22 of for all companies that offer the stuff in your ZIP Code and then you can find a somebody local up there that represents that company and you don't have to buy from us and if you certainly found it in your heart to do so would be glad to serve you and we do all the stuff over the telephone, but again, the purpose of the show is not to sell you insurance you know and we don't really operate that way as well.

What I want to do is I really like people to read my books and read my materials listen to the show and I'd like you to get something out of it.

Get some real consumer-oriented learning right because there's a situation I'm sure a lot of people that and again I found out through my brief lesson Medicare supplements that there's ABC DEF GH I plan so there there's a lot of variation is what you could do but just listening to what Hans would tell me you say okay will this one would make the most sense based on my budget and my needs. But then here comes the paste as I thinks critical is that I'd listen carefully.

I would've been able to save enough money to help me with long hair health insurer lawncare term insurance to my for long-term care, long-term care insurance that really could affect you know him my family and my life and in those kind of things just for the money that I say bright hereby understand what I was doing well. Who would you just talked about his financial planning, and that's what we do and that's what my were my real heart is is to sit down with all the subjects that we work with and look at your whole situation and Medicare is just one piece of that. What is really where we meet people because people can come to test the waters with us buying a Medicare supplement are looking at buying one and then the money we can save you and I like and promise that everybody we can save you money somebody you've Artie figure this out but this can be one of the areas in creating a savings there can give you some money.

First of all, just a stick in your pocket and spend on groceries but he could possibly be used for premium for some other area so I mean we got Medicare to look at long-term care we look at life insurance, estate planning your IRAs, your retirement income your Social Security and all the stuff mixes together like soup and we what we gotta get out of that is a living and a lifestyle for you and your spouse for the rest of your lives, and then impossibly and probably leave estate to your children. So when you figured out this is just one piece of it, but this is like a slamdunk. Robbie and this is just like one of the places in teaching my very well educated young people that work for me. They all want to get into the sophisticated stuff and I always were to go to the Medicare in order to start. There was somebody that's on Medicare were to meet people where they are and were going to go over to serve them and this will get to the sophisticated stuff later. This is the first place.

To me, demystifying Medicare today on finishing well.

A certified financial planner hostile in his book the complete cargo guide to planning living in retirement. There are guy.com got a lot more.

We hope you are enjoying finishing well brought you by Cardinal guy.com is a Cardinal guy.com for free downloads of preview shows including episodes about Social Security and Medicare, IRAs, long-term care, life insurance, investments and taxes as well as Hans best-selling book, the complete cargo guide to planning for and living in retirement. Plus the accompanying workbook. If you want to follow along with today's topic download free PDF Cardinal guy.com by going to the seven worries tab of today's show topic, just scroll down to useful documents once again for free resources shows going to get Hans book the complete Cardinal guide to planning for and living in retirement or the workbook go to Cardinal guy.com you have a question, comment or suggestion for future shows.

Click on finishing well radio show and send us a word. Once again that's Cardinal guy.com Cardinal guy.com now finishing well brought by Cardinal guide.com welcome back to finishing well today were demystifying Medicare the gift of finishing well with certified financial planner Hans Schild with complete Cardinal guide to planning and living for retirement and cons. There's one of the mystifying places of these plans when it comes to Medicare. Is this idea of a Medicare advantage which I don't guess it's a big advantage for many is it it can be just depends.

We don't want to make this decision for you.

So when we talk Medicare advantage. First of all, unless it's a special situation you came by one of those right now. Okay the only time you can change into or out of or change Medicare advantage plans. As in the fall the year at this time year you turn on the TV and that's all you hear about is Medicare just is just over and over in the radio and you know they're talking about Medicare advantage plans are not talking about what we talked about earlier on the show the Medicare and the Medicare sup so what a Medicare advantage plan is is you're getting your part a in your part B of Medicare and your part D from a private insurance company so your Medicare is going to be paying them in your to be choosing that so Medicare pays them every month. A pretty substantial sum of money to take you off their hands. Okay. And so you're now I don't want to name companies on the line but we represent all of them we sell is on the right and so your NASA situation where that is an advantage.

What first of all, is somebody who can afford a Medicare supplement program can hundred and $19 a month. We others a lot of people that maybe they can afford it but they just choose not to pay. Okay meaning and use it for something else. So these plans offer some of them the allure of zero premium nor low premium. You know where you pay nothing by the month and then you got there benefits going now. This catches on that which will get into in the second but I will make them sound like their bad coming. There's some people that have these and by these and they're just real time now.

You really need to go to their doctors and hospitals so you can have a network on these type of things typically and then you get situation.

Some of what you go on a network you want to go to a different Dr. research hospital or something. Some of them have network coverage, and then they didn't pay as well that some of them delighted to so that's a big stop sign for me. Me personally, because I'm just thinking of my family, some in my family or me personally I get seriously sick, I want the option to go to a doctor in the country that I referred to, or whatever to solve a problem. So your you get some difficulty with that they don't travel well if you go to other places you need to check on the other end, but the advantage is of course you've got either no or low premium.

That's, that's, which really can attract people to these plans can and so look at the premium versus what and and again when someone don't know how inexpensive American Medicare supplement might've been had they heard all the options of what was really available. There hope you meet some of these people that were paying 250 bucks a month or 300 bucks a month.

They may have been set up with out of the same salesperson that sold him the plan is your 50 bucks a month, commencing I got one at zero Habana you know and they so I got a few deductibles but I'm saving turn 50 bucks a month for copayments while on a usually include a part D plan. They make is very attractive, so I can set hours in advance.

Wheatley probably sell two or 300 of them a year okay and we always present the option of them to people and there's some people just call us requesting then there's people that are just of limited means they just don't have the you know the hundred and 2550 bucks a month and they also don't have. Also, they don't have a part D plan with them seek a cost there. So it's just it. That's something that again if you think they are very reasonable. They're typically not available in the country. You gotta be in an urban area is so yellow areas so so we just wanted to go over that a bit so you know what you have and we may do another later show a little closer to the season will just talk about them, but the other big issue is when it comes to Medicare and long-term care there since scary thing that a lot of us don't understand about that big time okay and when it comes to Medicare. One of the misconceptions and I asked you this during the break I said do you know how Medicare pays for long-term care and your answer was. I don't think so yeah okay and it took me very short order to show you that and I you know so so what I meant to tell you is Medicare will pay for some long-term care with first before I tell y'all that when I want to tell you is wise is important to you is you could be over 65 and you could be relying on Medicare and your Medicare supplement to pay for long-term care so you could be genuinely concerned about think you have coverage for it when I'm going explain is what you really okay so if you have traditional Medicare and Medicare supplement like we talked about on the first show you've got coverage for skilled nursing care for a maximum of 100 days.

So for starters, this can't lasting more than hundred days. You gotta be in the hospital first. So you got a transfer from a hospital directly into the skilled nursing facility. It needs to be a skilled nursing facility and you need to be getting skilled care in that facility.

Can you see how many you know this and that you know that. I can, you gotta be making progress or eat of the hospitals, backup on you got a whole bureaucracy. My mother-in-law who just passed away about a month ago she was in and out of facilities in the hospital from early December and they were out there. They were putting pressure on her to either center home center back to the hospital or put her into the wing where she done getting money from Medicare but somehow she weaved in and I helped her with some of that I really help her indirectly through kids the didn't have nerve.

It's just the point that I want everybody to get is you got very limited coverage and in the you know in the largest case and also the best case is the hundred days a coverage but most people get cut off well before that kind, and in your bucket Social Security pretty much tells you that story right will yeah and so in my book on the Social Security section in the appendix.

I actually put my own personal Social Security statement so and you, you know, if you follow all the stuff I want you to do when you read my book and you read the workbook you can go on I tell you in the workbook how to go get your own Social Security statement get on register online get it used to get these in the mail without even asking for 90 – form but I put my own Social Security statement in there for a number of reasons, mainly so I can explain Social Security in your decisions, but on page 4 of the Social Security statement and by the way, it will be on yours okay and I showed this to Robbie earlier it's it's in the original complete cardinal guide to planning for living in retirement, which is available on Amazon but you can get it through cardinal guide.com you also can download all the chapters for free and I'm not sure if you can get the appendix for free but you can just look at your own Social Security statement in Social Security. This is this is Social Security themselves telling me about Medicare and is on my statement. It just says in black-and-white on page 81 appendix a and is the fourth page of the so security statement. Medicare does not pay for long-term care so you may want to consider options for private insurance. So that was a point that I really wanted to make on the Medicare show is here Social Security who administers Medicare telling you that to ever they told everyone he that is ever read my statements. You probably didn't pick that up is that Medicare they just say pays nothing it does pay a little something so what I want you to learn from. That is, don't be relying on Medicare for care and if you're very low income. You obviously can't afford to buy insurance protection for this you still needed start preparing for what am I gonna do if I need care is not skilled care and I come out of the hospital or I go home who's gonna pay for that how we can pay for.

You need to think about these things. We can help walk you through that and even some very limited benefit insurance for home healthcare or for nursing care and home healthcare. We have short-term care policies that are available that will give you some buffer so your family won't be stock with just wondering how they can pay a bill for for home healthcare agency are trying to give you the care themselves. So one thing you will all learn in my shows is is that is were going through the sevens chapters of the seven worries the seven subjects that we address in the books were just cycling through them on the show.

All roads lead back to long-term care.

So even though the show is about Medicare today were still finishing it.

Talking about long-term care and how Medicare is not adequate in preparation for long-term care, tried to get into that discussion of wow now, Medicaid is something completely different, as if you been teaching me where it is at fit in this forest long-term care will and in so what I'm gonna just change the end to your question there. Where does it fit in with Medicare is that with the topic of the show and then I'll answer about long-term care so Medicaid is very different than Medicare, Medicaid is available to people of all ages.

Where is Medicare is pretty much for people 65 and over. And if you're eligible for Medicaid. What makes you eligible eligible for Medicaid is the absence of money and income, and it is basically health insurance. Now if you're over 65 and you're covered by Medicare and then you become eligible for Medicaid. Medicaid is actually gonna take what they can get from the Medicare program to pay the first party your bill and then it's going to use Medicaid to be your supplement essentially to plug in the gaps and pay the difference and then Medicaid also does pay for long-term care so that answers your question, but in order to qualify for Medicaid. You have to spend down to under $2000 a year and bass assets. Depending on the state urine and your income needs to be like less than thousand a month or something like that are all going toward care. So you gotta really be mean the lowest of income to qualify for Medicaid. So it's not really an option for people that have some means right and then clearly that is not going to be the best of care that you may want for your family.

Whatever is you and of looked down what your options are. As you have those discussions where we going to be mystifying. Medicare today on finishing well with certified financial planner Hans Schild and Hans if you got the last word for our listeners on this demystification we would all add on your last comment was that even with Medicaid's pitfalls. I'm still very, very glad it's there. It's a blessing that is there because it's a point of last resort and it stops as we don't have people you know living at home being uncured for living in the streets. I mean, is if a person reaches a point in their out of money but they need care in the United States of America work in the take care of. So that's what it is is a blessing that is there high again finishing well with certified financial planner Hans Schild a complete cardinal guide to planning and living for retirement is all there cardinal guide.com thank you Hans great at having everything we hope you enjoyed finishing well brought you by cardinal guide.com visit cardinal guide.com for free downloads of the show previous shows on topics such as Social Security, Medicare and IRAs, long-term care and life insurance, investments and taxes as well as ponds 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 what you get.

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