Medicare Supplement Plan N - Best Value?

medigap

plan

n can be a great

value

its premiums are often 30 percent less than

Plan

F and 20 percent less than

plan

G and that means if you're new to

Medicare

you might be able to find a

plan

in for under a hundred dollars a month depending on what state you're in so you might be wondering well what's the catch then with

plan

in well there's no trickery or a super fine print involved however there are some things you need to know about

plan

in and what benefits it doesn't

cover so stick with me and I'll tell you what they are hi I'm Joann Quinn and thanks for joining me today I'm co-founder of re Medigap comm where I've written over 50 articles about

Medicare

and Medicaid insurance and when we're talking about

Medicare

insurance

Medicare

supplement

s specifically we often think of Medigap

Plan

F and that's because it's been the most popular one for years and it covers all your coinsurance co-pays and deductibles when we think about

value

plan

s with medigap

plan

g comes to mind but

plan

and should not be overlooked it's low premiums make it stand out you just need to know what benefits it does not have when compared to

plan

F and

plan

G taking a look at

plan

FG and in side-by-side

plan

F of course covers every benefit on the chart whereas

plan

G and

plan

in don't cover the Part B deductible that's what these two

plan

s have in common now let's focus on the differences of

plan

end because this is where it

really starts to separate itself from

plan

G with

plan

n you have co-pays to the provider and to the emergency room let's start with the provider when you visit the provider you will have a copay anywhere from $0 to $20.00 so that means the provider and their discretion can charge you a zero dollar copay anything in between but never more than 20 dollars to visit that provider and so rest assured that when you go to the doctor your copay would never be more than 20 dollars and it could be as

little as $0 the emergency room copay that is a $50 copay however if you're admitted into the hospital that copay is waived but you do need to make sure that you are admitted under Part A expense okay that was the easy part now we're moving on to

Medicare

Part B excess charges now excess charges are covered under

Plan

F and

plan

G but they are not a covered benefit under

plan

n but the good news is is that if you visit a doctor who accepts

medicare

assignment

plan

B excess charges would

not apply to you under

plan

n and this is important and this is what we're going to discuss right now is Part B excess charges and

Medicare

assignment and how they go together and how it can affect you on

plan

in all right a doctor can accept

Medicare

patients but not accept

Medicare

assignment I'm going to repeat that again a doctor can see

Medicare

patients but not accept

Medicare

assignment this is really important and under

plan

n something we need to pay attention to when a doctor

doesn't accept

Medicare

assignment basically what they're telling

Medicare

is will see these

Medicare

patients but we don't agree with how much you're paying us and by you they're talking to

Medicare

they don't agree with the

Medicare

approved amount so when they tell

Medicare

they don't accept assignment what they're saying is we don't accept how much

Medicare

is paying us so now we're allowed to charge the patient 15 percent of the approved amount from

Medicare

so for example if you went to the doctor and the doctor sent your claim to

Medicare

and charged

Medicare

$250 for the service provided to you

Medicare

may only approve $100 of that if the doctor does not accept

Medicare

assignment then they are allowed to charge you 15% of that hundred dollars which means you would get a bill for $15 and that's not a huge excess charge but it is an excess charge in an example of how it could add up over time now it's easy to find out if doctors

accept

Medicare

assignment or not and I'm going to show you how here we are at

medicare

.gov where we're going to locate doctors and whether or not they accept

Medicare

assignment I'm going to show you how easy this is all you need to do is go to find doctors and other health professionals and here you can put in your zip code city state and address and then over here you can put in your doctors last name or specialty or they ask for a medical condition so they give you a variety of

choices in order to search for a doctor I'm going to put in a zip code up to nine five seven six and I don't know let's say let's say there's a doctor Smith and here are some Smith's okay so we'll select this Smith and we'll do a search and it'll populate and it's going to tell me a little bit of information about this doctor but what I'm looking for is whether or not this doctor accepts

Medicare

assignment and at the very bottom it will tell me this

doctor accepts

medicare

assignment and here it's saying the healthcare professional accepts the

Medicare

approved amount you will not be billed for any more than the

Medicare

deductible and coinsurance so basically what that means like we said before Medigap

plan

in you pay that Part B deductible and then coinsurance which if you have

plan

in you're not going to pay for coinsurance it's going to be covered so what they're telling you here is that you won't have to worry about

Part B access charges the only thing you have to worry about is the deductible which you already know you have to pay and any coinsurance and that applies to people who don't have a Medigap

plan

but who only have

Medicare

Part A and B they have to pay that 20% coinsurance they don't have anything helping them out okay let's do a new search and we're going to do it by specialty this time let's say dermatologist dermatology here we go let's see what doctors are in this area

that do dermatology and whether or not the accept assignment so here they're giving us a list within this area of doctors and if you take a look here see this little I guess it looks to me like a little clipboard I'm sure it's very tiny on your screen but the point is is this little clipboard shows you that the doctor accepts

Medicare

assignment this is the symbol for accepting assignment as you can see every single one of these doctors that's popping up actually actually accepts

assignment it may be hard to find anyone who doesn't it's like I said before not very many doctors don't but aha we found one here we did find a doctor that doesn't accept

Medicare

assignment and you can tell because it has a little question mark I'm going to open him up let's take a peek so here's a little information about this doctor but what it says at the bottom which we're most interested with right now is that may accept

Medicare

assignment so it's

questionable so you are taking a chance that you may be billed Part B excess charges if you see this physician it says the health care professional may accept the

Medicare

approved amount you may be billed for more than the

Medicare

deductible and coinsurance so what that means is you may be billed for Part B excess charges okay I'm going to go back to the physician compare home so you can see where it is if you need to go back you also have this little tab if you just want to go back to

your original results we can do that and it'll take you back to your list of doctors and if you want to go back to the physician compare home you can do that as well before we do that I want to show you the side over here the sidebar you can ask

Medicare

to only show you those who accept

Medicare

approved amount and we're going to update the results and now that doctor is gone so you can refine your search the way you want over on the sidebar so that's pretty handy tool now you see

how easy that was to find out if a doctor accepts

Medicare

assignment and clearly many do now you can also call a doctor's office and ask them if they accept

Medicare

assignment but I struggle with that because sometimes you just don't know who's working at the office who's picking up that phone and who you're talking to it could be someone who's brand-new or someone who really doesn't understand what

Medicare

assignment really means so that's why I like using

Medicare

Gove's tool to find out if a doctor actually does accept

Medicare

assignment as a side note there are some states that do not allow access charges that would be a

Medicare

overcharge measured law those dates are Connecticut Massachusetts Minnesota New York Ohio Pennsylvania Rhode Island in Vermont and if you use

plan

in in any of those states you would not be charged a Part B excess charge okay time for a quick quiz and this is going to be fun and no one's keeping track except

you so let's see how well you do all right question number one Medigap

plan

in and medigap

plan

g don't cover which benefit a

Medicare

Part A deductible B

Medicare

Part B deductible C

Medicare

Part B coinsurance or D none of the above and you can pause the video if you need to think about it okay here is the answer if you said B the Part B deductible then you're correct that's the one benefit

plan

G and

plan

n don't cover question number two Medigap

plan

and provider co-pays

are usually more than $20 a visit a true or be false okay here's the answer if you said B false you're correct the provider co-pays are never more than $20 and remember that can be as little as $0 but never more than 20 question number three you pay

Medicare

Part B excess charges if a you have

plan

ned in and you visit a doctor who accepts

medicare

assignment B you have medigap

plan

g and visit a doctor who doesn't accept

Medicare

assignment C you have

plan

in and visit a provider

that doesn't accept

Medicare

assignment D none of the above the answer is C

plan

n does not cover Part B excess charges and they're only applied if the provider doesn't accept

Medicare

assignment last question number four the

best

way to find out if a doctor accepts

medicare

assignment is to a call the doctor's office B wait and see if you get a bill C use the physician tool finder at

medicare

.gov or D call

Medicare

well this was a bit of a tricky one I suppose you could do any

of the above but during our video obviously it was clear that I think that the

best

way to find out the doctor accepts

medicare

assignment is to go on the physician tool finder at

medicare

.gov you know calling the doctor's office you never know who you're going to speak to and if they really know what you're talking about when you say

Medicare

assignment you obviously don't want to wait and see if you get a bill because that's too late and then calling

Medicare

that might be

something you could do but then again you're on the phone you're waiting to speak to someone and it's just not as quick as actually getting on the computer and looking up yourself so in this particular case I would say C is probably your

best

bet so how did you do on the quiz I'd love to know in the comment section below and if you like this video press the like button share it with your friends and subscribe and if you'd love to learn more about

Medicare

and how to make it

less confusing sign up for my free

Medicare

eCourse at wwr a medigap comm where you will receive one email a day going over all the different parts of

medicare

and

medicare

supplement

insurance thanks again for watching and I'll see you next time the short Nick alright I'm going to start all the way over I mean one more really oh my gosh Part A per member that and no that's not what I'm saying oh and subscribe I let go on and on and on just cut it out subscribe to my a channel

channel to that no no no oh my gosh hi hmm I

plan

in and did such a hard thing to say that's good enough you