Retirement Realities: Medicare

It is time for open enrollment for Medicare - why is this such a critical time for seniors? Our retired expert Mark Oberlin joins with some advice. 

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Since West Michigan's Morning News Steve Kelly and Brett Kita.
It is open enrollment for Medicare season once again with
retirement realities. Mark Oberlin joins us on the liveline. Mark,
thanks for doing this.

Speaker 2 (00:13):
Today, Happy Friday.

Speaker 1 (00:15):
So mentioned this before bottom of the hour news. My
mom and I have had this conversation. Why is this
such a critical time period for seniors.

Speaker 2 (00:25):
Well, let's keep in mind the size of the market.
We're talking about almost twenty percent of American sixty seven
million people are eligible for Medicare, and this is something
that hits people kind of out of the blue. They're
wrapping up things at work and then they have to,
oh my gosh, I got to make a choice now. Yeah,
it's probably the most important choice of the rest of

(00:48):
your life. The average American spends one hundred and seventy
two thousand dollars of healthcare costs between the age of
sixty five and death, So that hundred plus for a couple.
So these choices that you make when you initially enroll
in Medicare, some of these are irrevocal choices. Some of

(01:09):
these you can never go back and say, wow, I
wish I would have done this instead. So this is
a very critical time between October fifteen and December seventh.

Speaker 3 (01:19):
So Mark, because of that, what do you recommend Because
obviously there's a lot of advertising out there as far
as well, this group can help you, or this business
can help you, or there's the local agents right there
that maybe you know and can navigate and have your
best interest because you've known them for a while, maybe
they've handled other family dealings. What do you recommend here?

Speaker 2 (01:38):
Well, I mean, as much as I like Broadway, Joe
Namath and Jimmy JJ, Daniel Mitt Walker or Joe Shatner
and so on. You know, Tom Selleck goes from selling
reverse mortgages the rest of the nine months and goes
back to Medicare that band's plans. So I personally would
recommend people talk to a local agent. These guys are
simply shilling to get you to call an eight hundred

(02:00):
burn and talk to somebody you don't know, is unaccountable
for your personal needs. They're just trying to sell their version.
So Medicare is a government program A parts A and
B and then parts see Medicare advantage. This is what
they're selling and it's a private plan. So you can
imagine they have to offer certain benefits, but the bottom

(02:21):
line is the range of options. It's nearly endless for
Medicare advantage plans and Medicare supplemental. So, because this is
where you're going to pick up most of your costs,
you're going to want to have the best plan that
suits your medical needs as well as your spousees. And

(02:42):
this is where you have to kind of anticipate what
your future costs are going to be. I can tell
you from personal experience, when you hit sixty five, the
wheel start coming off the bus and there's no way
to put them back on some cases. So you want
to think ahead.

Speaker 1 (02:57):
So I mean, can you qualify quantum find what's better?
How do you know Medicare advantage or supplemental? What kind
of questions should you be asking?

Speaker 2 (03:05):
Well, that's when you sit down with again in my recommendation,
a local agent. Talk to them about bring a list
in of your medications. This is going to be critical
on the part d choice the prescription plan. Tell them
about your travel plans, even your budget. This is one
thing that people fail to budget for is you know

(03:26):
Medicare premiums. Everybody's got to pay it's one hundred and
eighty five bucks a month. Now it's going to go
up roughly twelve percent for twenty twenty six, so it's
a twenty one dollars per month increase. And then these
Medicare advantage plans, the premiums run from zero a month,
which is a bare bones plan all the way up

(03:47):
you can imagine. But the average Medicare advantage premium is
about seventeen dollars a month, so one hundred and eighty
five LUSS seventeen, and it goes on up. The Medicare
supplemental or Medica gap that's where you start paying a
little higher premium, like one hundred and ten hundred and
twenty bucks a month. But I can tell you again
from personal experience, I have metagap coverage and it covered

(04:12):
a bunch of stuff this year. I had a shoulder
reconstruction and a cataract. I mean, physical therapy run on
and on, and these are the kind of things that
you wish you had a Medicare supplemental metagap policy because
you're going to be buried with copage deductibles and so
these things add up. So when somebody says, yeah, this

(04:35):
Medicare Advantage plan has zero premium. That's only a partially
true statement.

Speaker 1 (04:42):
I love this segment, Retirement Realities with Mark Oberlin here
on Wood Radio, A pleasure. Thanks for your time again today, always,