Original Medicare, or Medicare Advantage?
This is the most basic decision you’ll make about health insurance at the point of retirement.
If you opt not to join Original Medicare at that time, you forego the preexisting condition protections offered in Medigap supplemental policies. Medicare Advantage can save you money on premiums, but Original Medicare remains the gold standard for its flexible access to providers and predictability of total costs over your lifetime.
The latest in my series of retirement guides and podcasts addresses the Original v. Advantage choice. My guest on the podcast is one of the nation’s top experts on Medicare – Dr. Gretchen Jacobson, an associate director with the Kaiser Family Foundation’s Program on Medicare Policy. Much of Gretchen’s research focuses on the Medicare Advantage program.
In our discussion, Gretchen reviews the basics on enrolling in these two Medicare options. We also review the differences in access to health providers with these two options, the trade-off on costs, and the overall plus/minus of both approaches.
Click this link to listen to the podcast. The podcast also is available on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher and Spotify (search: “RetirementRevised”).