When people are new to Medicare at age 65, we often see them get overwhelmed quickly by all the confusing lingo and insurance terminology.

It’s hard to make sense of a national health insurance program like Medicare when throughout your life you’ve been had your health insurance selections made for you by your employers.

Fortunately, the key to understanding Medicare is just to break it down into pieces that are easier to learn in steps than all at once. Here’s our best tips for learning what you need to know about Medicare.

Learn the Parts First

Medicare has four parts, and if you first learn what these are and what they do, it becomes easier to understand the rest.

Part A is your hospital coverage. It provides your inpatient care, skilled nursing facility care, blood transfusions and hospice. You will generally use Part A less than Part B as hospital stays occur more rarely than outpatient care.

Part B is your outpatient medical care. It provides for a whole bunch of things, like preventive care, doctor visits, lab testing, diagnostic imaging, urgent and emergency care, outpatient surgeries, some injectable drugs and chemotherapy among other things.

Medicare will approve most medically necessary health care treatments as long as they are performed by a physician that accepts Medicare.

If you don’t have any other form of creditable coverage, then having both Medicare Parts A and B are very important.

Part C is optional Medicare Advantage coverage. Everyone has the option of getting their Medicare Part A and B care through a private insurance company instead of Original Medicare. We’ll discuss this more in the third step.

Part D is our retail outpatient drug coverage. Medicare Part D is voluntary, but it can save you a great deal of money on prescriptions.

Sold by private insurance companies, these prescription drug plans give you access to a formulary of medications that you can get at just a copay instead of paying full price for your medications.

Medicare doesn’t cover routine vision, dental or hearing benefits. It also doesn’t cover long-term care.

Learn the Costs

Most people pay nothing for Medicare Part A when they age into Medicare. That’s because most Americans pay FICA taxes during their working years to prepay their hospital benefits.

If you didn’t work the necessary 10 years to qualify for free Part A, you can obtain it under a spouse’s work record or you can pay for Part A…
 
Continue reading the article and learn more about Medicare on LifeIsAnEpisode.com.