Escape High Costs! Compare Medicare Supplement Plan G Prices For 2025

One of the biggest questions is how much is Medicare going to cost each month? Also, should I get a plan G or a plan N or should I look at Medicare Advantage plans? And in this video, I'm going to give you raw data that's going to show you how much these costs are going to be for you each month and also what are the benefits of each one of these plans so that you can make a decision on your own as to what plan is best for you. Because as we know, Medicare is not a one-size-fits-all. There are millions of people who get onto Medicare each year and they choose different plans and different companies. And in this video, I want to dive into each one of those. If you look on the screen, you have your Medicare card on the left-hand side. That's your red, white, and blue card. Everyone who gets on Medicare is going to get this card. And in 2025, this card is going to cost around $185 a month. So what does this give you? This gives you about 80% of your cost for Medicare, 80% of your benefits. This is going to cover the 80%, but now we have to cover the additional 20%. And this is where when you call someone like myself or a broker or a Medicare supplement specialist, this is what they're going to go over. After you get your red, white, and blue card, remember I said, everyone has to get this. This is going to cover 80% of your part A and part B, hospital and doctor. It's not going to cover prescription drug plans. And it's not a Medicare Advantage plan. That's separate. You're going to have to choose which one of these directions you want to go. Do you want to go the Medigap, also known as Medicare supplement direction? And let me throw the chart up here. Or do you want to go the Medicare Advantage? If you can see by this chart or graph, you sign up for Medicare part A and B, and then you have a split decision. You either go the path of Medicare Advantage, and that covers everything. That covers your medical, hospital, doctor, your prescription drug plans, your dental vision and hearing. If it's an MAPD, Medicare Advantage prescription drug, it will cover all of those things. You do not get to mix and match. But if you choose a Medicare supplement plan, you're going to go in the direction of the red, choose a Medicare supplement plan G or N, or one of those plans. Then you're going to choose a drug plan, and then you're going to choose dental vision and hearing. So let's get back to this chart. How much is all of this going to cost? Well, up front, I can give you an average. This is throughout, if you're watching from Kansas or Florida, California, wherever you may be watching from, this is an average of what you're going to pay. So on average, no matter what you get, you're going to pay $185 a month for your Medicare red, white and blue card, your Medicare part A and B card from the government. On top of that, if you choose, if you look at this section right here, if you choose a Medicare Advantage plan, most likely a lot of these plans are zero premium plans. There's a catch to that, and I'll get into it when I go in further in the video, but these will be zero premium plans. A lot of times I've seen them for $25 a month. This is monthly. So what about the plan G and the plan N? On average, throughout the entire country, you're going to pay about $140 a month for a plan G. Now this is for someone who is 65 years old. I did the average. So if you live in a place that is inexpensive, it's going to be less than that. If you live in New York City, it's probably going to be double that. If you live in something like Pennsylvania, possibly North Carolina, these different places, maybe it's going to be around $140 a month. Same thing with the plan N. If you live in New York City, it's going to cost about $240 a month. If you live somewhere that's average standard of living, it's going to be about $106 a month for that plan. And I'll get into what these plans cover. So let's start with the most popular plan, which is the plan G. Now, why is this the most popular? It's because it's clean. Once you pay your $185 a month to the government for that red, white, and blue card, then you pay for a plan G. Now, first you pick what plan you want. Then you go over the prices of the different companies. Because a plan G is the same, whether it's from UnitedHealthcare, whether it's from Aetna, Cigna, Humana, it does not matter. The benefits do not change. What changes is the price and the service. Now, some people would say, well, isn't someone like you the customer service? Yes, that is true. But some companies are a nightmare to deal with. It doesn't matter if I have to call them or if the customer has to call them. They're hard to deal with and others are easier to deal with. Plus, some premiums are a lot less than other companies. So with a plan G, your average is going to be $140 a month. Now, once again, it's easy to look that up. You call someone like myself that we have numbers from all over the country and they're different in different zip codes. But how with a plan G, how much is your hospital going to cost? And that's the second column. So it's going to cost zero. Now, that doesn't matter what company you're with with your plan G. It's going to cost you zero when you go into the hospital. It's pretty simple. If you look at plan N, it's going to cost you zero also. So as we go back to the first category, the premiums do not be fooled by how much the premium is, because you have to look at the premium. How much can I afford each month? But everyone would take this zero premium Medicare Advantage plan if it was just the premium, obviously. So let's look at the three different columns. Your hospital stay. Now, the one thing about the Medicare Advantage plans are you have to see if the hospital accepts that specific plan. You cannot contact the hospital and say, do you take Humana or do you take UnitedHealthcare? They have different individual plans. So they might take some of these plans or your doctor might take some of these plans and it might not take others. So the first thing is, does the hospital actually accept it? Now, with plan G and plan N, the hospital, if they take Medicare, they have to accept plan G and plan N, no matter what company it comes from. Aetna, Humana, it could be a no-name company you've never heard of, which I have put people on. So you never have to worry about that, the hospital accepting that original Medicare or a plan G or plan N. With the Medicare Advantage plans, you do. And the difference is plan G and N are both zero when you stay in the hospital. For a Medicare Advantage plan, you have to ask how much is the hospital stay and do they actually take the plan? So it could be $250 a day, it could be $350 a day. Let's move on to the doctor and the specialists. Now for Medicare Advantage plans, they usually have two different prices for this. You have a zero for primary care physician, and then you might pay $35 or $45 to go to a specialist. Plan G, this is completely the same all across the board. You're going to pay, depending on what the deductible is for 2025, in 2024, it was $240 for the entire year. Most likely it's going to be $250 or $260 for the deductible for the year for plan G in 2025. So you're going to pay that, let's just say $240 for the year, and then you're not going to pay anything going to the doctor or the specialist. Same thing with plan N. You're going to pay that deductible first, then you're going to pay up to $20. Now if you look at this, I show like the arrow as 20 is the most you're going to pay going to most likely a specialist, not your primary. But primary or specialist, the most is $20. You could pay nothing going to each one of these, and I've seen people who are on plan N, they email me, they call me, they say, listen, I haven't been charged at all going to any of my specialists. It does happen, but the most is $20. Let's move on to CAT scans and MRIs. Now the one thing about plan G and plan N, I must tell you that in the past couple years, the amount of people, my clients that have contacted me, I usually go over both of these plans and the prices in their area. I'm licensed in 48 states, so I get calls from all over the country, and I have clients from all over the country. It's a mix of plan N and plan G, my clients in the past couple years, meaning 50% of my clients, new clients get on plan G, the other 50% get on plan N. I have a very low rate of people that go on Medicare Advantage plans, but it's split between G and N for the most part. Now with a Medicare Advantage plan, you're going to pay, you could pay $300 for a CAT scan or an MRI. Now it could be cheaper, it just depends on what plan, but keep in mind, if these numbers are cheaper, most likely the plan is not going to be accepted at many different places, outpatient centers and so forth. And what I'm hearing, especially for 2025, 2025 and beyond, Medicare Advantage plans are being dropped in a lot of zip codes, meaning the company is actually saying we're not going to offer these plans in certain zip codes throughout the country. So there's a lot of changes happening. But with plan G and N, they're both zero. Let's move on to skilled nursing. Now this is one of the most important parts of a Medicare Advantage plan versus plan G or plan N. With Medicare Advantage plans, they offer 20 days of skilled nursing. Now some people don't care about this. They say, hey, my kids will take care of me or my wife or whatever it may be. I'll go in, have the 20 days of skilled nursing and then go home. But with plan G and plan N, you get 100 days of skilled nursing. And I have heard horror stories about skilled nursing when it comes to Medicare Advantage plans. I've heard nothing but good things about skilled nursing when it comes to the Medigap plan G and plan N. This is extremely important. Next up is ambulance. So Medicare Advantage plans are going to charge you something for ambulance, $250, $300 per ambulance. You will be charged zero for both plan G and plan N. You're starting to see the pattern of plan G and plan N. Yes, you have an upfront cost, but you really don't pay for anything when you go to the hospital, doctor or anything else. You do have that small deductible of $240 a year in 2024. Like I said, it'll be a little bit more in 2025 and 26, not much more most likely. And then with plan N, you pay the copay, just going to the doctor and the specialist. Okay. So the maximum out of pocket, this ranges, I get a lot of comments about this for the Medicare Advantage plan people that say, well, my maximum out of pocket is $2,000 a year. One thing I can tell you, if it's that low, you are going to be in a small little bubble of doctors and hospitals that you can actually go to and use that plan. There's no way that you're getting a Medicare Advantage plan and they just open the floodgates and say, Hey, your maximum out of pocket is going to be $2,000. You can go get surgery done from the top doctor over here. You can go to the Mayo clinic. You can go to the Cleveland clinic. No, that's not going to happen. You're going to have a small pool of doctors and hospitals that are going to accept the plan. But if you have a large maximum out of pocket, the pool is going to get bigger. So what I wrote here was 7,550. This is going to be a larger amount, but it doesn't mean every doctor and hospital are going to accept it. Now for the plan G and the plan N, basically for the maximum out of pocket, if you take the plan G, you just take that 140, you times that by 12, and I'll scroll down a little bit, and that's going to be 1,680. Now you just add on that deductible that you're going to pay for the year, because most people are going to go to the doctor or go to an outpatient center a few times and they'll end up paying that deductible. And that's where your maximum, once you pay that deductible, that's where your maximum is going to come from, that $240. And then it's going to equal $1,920 if your premium obviously is $140 per month. Just take your premium, times it by 12, and then add what the deductible is for that year. And that's it. You're not going to pay anything else. Now, a lot of people have contacted me and I've had to call their doctor's office, whether or not they take this plan G or they ask me, are you sure there's nothing else that you're going to be paying for? Well, after you've been doing this as long as I have, I was even sure about this when I had been doing it for three years. I used to tell people, you're not going to pay anything else. But now I've been doing it for over 15 years and I have clients all over the country. And I can honestly say that I never get calls saying, hey, you lied to me or they didn't take this plan G. I never get any of those calls. It's one of the reasons why I like doing what I'm doing is because I don't like unhappy customers. I say this to everyone who calls my office. It's the last thing I want is somebody to call and say, hey, whatever you told me wasn't true. I don't need that in my life. Nobody needs that in their life. So next would be the plan N. So a little bit different. You take the premium of the plan N. Let's scroll down. You multiply that by 12, obviously 12 months, and you get $1,272 if you're paying $106 a month. Then you add that same deductible for the year, which was $240 in 2024. And that would give you that maximum. Now you have to say to yourself, how many times am I going to go to the doctor or the specialist? On here, I put six times. So you add $20. That's the maximum. So I just added $120, which would be six times going to the doctor. And that would give you your $1,632. Now there's two other things that I didn't mention. You do pay $50 going to the emergency room for plan N, but most people don't go to the emergency room more than one or two times a year, if that. So in this example, I put on $50 that they went to the emergency room. That is waived if you get admitted into the hospital, but I left it on there. Another thing about plan N, and I don't want to, well, yeah, I don't want to miss anything, but people do ask about the excess charge that plan N comes with. And less than 3% of the doctors charge an excess charge throughout the entire country. I get the question all the time when people are starting Medicare for the first time. I don't know how many people I have on plan N. If I had to take a guess, 400 and something people, and that's throughout the entire country in different states. I probably have someone on plan N in pretty much every state out there, but I always get the question, well, the excess charge, how do I know? Do I call the doctor and say, do you charge an excess charge? Well, if I wasn't an agent and I was just out to dinner with somebody and they asked me about an excess charge, I personally would say, it's a joke. I've been doing this for 17 years. I've never had anyone tell me, I've talked to thousands of people, never had anyone say I got charged an excess charge. And in all actuality, I haven't seen in the comments. I don't read every single comment because some of my videos get thousands of comments, but I have never had anyone write a comment about getting an excess charge. Now I'm sure on this video, somebody will because I said that, but it's very rare and it's only, it's a part B excess charge. So one of the questions that I get is, well, what if I go in the hospital and I have to have a surgery? I don't want to pay $50,000 because of an excess charge. You're not going to get charged $50,000 for part B, which is medical. Part A is hospital. It is not a part A hospital charge. And I, they can only charge up to 15% on top of, let's say a doctor's visit. So if your doctor's visit was a hundred dollars, they could only charge $115 for that visit. It's very rare. There's less than 3% of the doctors in the country. And I have no problem with putting people on plan N and saving them 35 to $40 a month if they're very, very healthy and they don't want to pay the premiums of plan G. One of the other questions that I constantly get is I heard, you know, probably from other videos or other agents that plan N does not go up each year as fast as plan G. That can be true for certain companies. And that's why a lot of people choose to plan N, but some, but I still have 50% of the people getting on plan G because they don't want to pay a copay. And they just say, I just want the best, excuse me for that. And I don't want any problems. So let's move on to drug plans. Now, drug plans, if you are taking a generic or a couple generics like a statin drug or a blood pressure medication, these, especially in the past couple of years, there's a zero premium plan. Most of the time, and I mean 99% of the time, my clients are not paying over $10 a month for a drug plan. I have some that are on really heavy drugs and their drug plan might be $50 a month or whatever for the premium. Everyone's going to pay a copay on their drugs, but for a lot of these low cost generics, even if your premium's low and it has a deductible, you're still only going to pay a dollar or two for your generics. So I wouldn't worry about that. You could just factor in, you know, less than $10 a month for your drug plan, unless you're taking a lot of drugs. So let's do the math real quick on this. Let's just say someone's getting a plan G and it's 2025 or 2026, 2025. You're going to pay $185 a month to the government, unless you're a higher income earner. If that's the case, you have to talk to an agent or, you know, somebody who knows what they call IRMA, which is I-R-M-A-A. If you're making $500,000 a year, you're going to pay more than $185 a month. But for the most part, most people are going to pay this $185 a month. Now that's not per couple, husband and wife, it's individual. So let's take an individual, $185 a month. If they get the plan G plus $140 for the month, then the only other thing they're going to be paying is for hospital and doctor is that $240 a year. So add that up as you're watching this video. $185 plus $140 plus the $240 if you, if you like, and then tack on $10 for a drug plan, even though I think that's probably high, believe it or not, and that will be your maximum, unless you want to get a dental vision and hearing plan. Now this is probably the biggest headache for most people because it is completely separate when you're on a plan G or a plan N. You can get the same company's dental plan, but the first thing you have to do is ask your dentist what they accept. Now these plans normally are around $40 a month. I have on here $10. There's some plans that are that low, but if you're going to get dental, you're going to pay around $40 a month for a decent plan, which I think is a lot, but that is what you can add in. And that's something that I could spend a whole video on dental. I'm not going to do that because it's too intricate and there's too much information, but you really have to find out what your dentist takes and then, you know, go over that, um, how much it actually is with certain companies. Now the advantage plans come with all these additional things like over the counter card and the gym membership possibly, and dental vision and hearing combined. But like I said, if you're looking for the best medical and doctor coverage out there, you're going to want to go with a plan N most of the time. So I hope this video helped. If you have any questions, leave a comment and please give a thumbs up. Please watch some of my other videos that I'll leave up on the screen at the end of this video so that you can get more information and I'll see you at the next video.