Alicia Canning introduced Michael Castro, an independent advisor whose family has over 40 years of experience in insurance.
Michael held an informational conversation about Medicare and how to get the most out of Medicare and its benefits.
While our club seems to fit the general age bracket for Medicare (lol) benefits can be available for people at nearly any age.
Michael’s tips include the following:
The best order to sign up for Medicare
- You can sign up for Part A immediately while you are still working or on a spouse’s insurance and sign up for B later.
- When you are ready to sign up for B sign up for part D at the same time, even if you don’t need D right away.
- Part D is related to medication and prescriptions, and if you don’t sign up for D while signing up for B you will be penalized for the amount of time it takes to sign up between B and D – even if you don’t need medication right away.
What are Medicare Advantage plans?
- When you have Medicare at it’s base – Medicare will pay for 80% of services while you are responsible for 20%. Advantage plans help to cover the 20% you are responsible for.
- A, B, and D combined is a C plan (an advantage plan) using an agent that can help you find a plan appropriate for your needs, lifestyle, and specialists seen; you can pay a small monthly premium to reduce the 20% cost of the basic Medicare plan.
Advantage plans offer different benefits.
- For example, through United, some plans offer dental, vision, and hearing.
- Renew Active is a benefit to join gyms that are in-network for no cost. You can join multiple gyms at once, which is excellent if you like to swim at one gym, prefer classes at another, or like or travel often.
- Catalogs are sent out quarterly or can be accessed at anytime online to access free money to purchase common over-the-counter items found at pharmacies, like vitamins, meals, toothpaste, etc.
The difference in cost for an advantage plan is either a larger upfront premium for less money spent in copays or less of an upfront premium to spend more copay.
With a supplement plan, you can use any doctor you want throughout the country, e.g., if you spend winters in Florida and summers in Connecticut, you will get the same treatment for the same cost.
Questions from club members:
Q: Are there online tools to compare plans?
A: Yes, there are, and you can compare across different companies.
Q: Does Medicare have life insurance?
A: No. United does have life insurance, but it’s not covered under Medicare.
Q: Who underwrites the no-cost plan?
A: For the plans that have 0 premiums per month, you will pay a higher copay at your visit.
Q: Is it true that some Medicare Advantage plans were found to have gatekeepers? The primary physician needs to refer to specialists for the insurer to control costs, and the gatekeepers are instructed not to make as many referrals resulting in a class action lawsuit?
A: Michael can only speak for United, which does not require referrals through a primary care physician.
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