Older couple on a sofa looking over Medicare plan details together on a tablet
Medicare, on your terms

Choose Medicare With Both Eyes Open

Doctors, prescriptions, monthly costs and enrollment dates rarely point the same way. Line them up here and see which plan holds together for you.

Start Your Check

Hospital Cover

Part A takes care of inpatient stays, skilled nursing after a hospital visit, and hospice.

Medical Cover

Part B pays toward doctor visits, preventive checkups, lab testing, and medical equipment.

Drug Cover

Part D plans each carry their own drug lists, so one prescription can cost differing sums.

Filling the Gaps

Advantage bundles it all onto one card, and Medigap sits beside A and B for the leftovers.

Smiling older man in glasses talking through his details with a nurse holding a clipboard
After you reach out

Start With Your Details, Then Weigh the Plans

Tell me which doctors you see, what you take each month and roughly what you can spend. I hold that against the plans open to you and show where each one fits or falls short.

Before you enroll

  • Your doctors, checked
  • Your prescriptions, priced
  • Yearly costs, added up

After you enroll

  • Yearly notices, decoded
  • Confusing bills, looked into
  • Moves and new doctors
See How It Works
Topics covered here

Six Medicare Subjects Worth Understanding Early

Each one below trips people up in a different way. Pick the one closest to where you stand right now.

Original Medicare

Parts A and B, run by the government. Any doctor who takes Medicare, with no network to think about.

See the details

Medicare Advantage

Private plans that roll A, B and usually D onto one card, often with dental or vision, in a network.

See the details

Prescription Plans

Stand-alone Part D coverage. The drug list, and the tier your medicine sits on, decide what you pay.

See the details

Medigap Policies

Supplement plans that pick up the share Original Medicare leaves behind, from copays to deductibles.

See the details

Enrollment Timing

Your first window, the yearly change period, and the special cases that open a door in between them.

See the details

Costs to Expect

Premiums, deductibles, coinsurance and the yearly spending cap that some plans have and others skip.

See the details
What you get

Built Around Your Doctors, Medicines and Budget

Every plan brochure promises the same things. The differences only show up once you hold them against the details of your own life, and that is where I start.

Your doctors come first

I check every plan's list against the doctors you see now.

Medicines priced, not guessed

I run your medicines through every single drug list first.

Everything in writing

I write up a summary you can keep, share and come back to.

Older couple laughing together on a sofa at home
After the paperwork

What People Say After Choosing

The plan I almost picked did not cover my heart doctor. That check saved me a year of driving across town.

Loretta BeasleyOriginal Medicare plus Medigap

I came in with a pile of mailers and left with one page showing what each plan would cost me. That was it.

Frank DunmoreMedicare Advantage, second year

My drug plan looked cheap until each tier was priced out. I switched and now pay far less at the pharmacy.

Bernice ColeStand-alone Part D plan
Asked most often

Five Questions Almost Everyone Asks

Your first window opens three months before the month you turn 65 and closes three months after it. Signing up inside that window keeps you clear of late penalties on Part B and Part D later on.

Often you can hold off while you or your spouse are still working and covered by that job's group plan. Once the job coverage ends, an eight-month special window opens. I check the size of the employer first, because the rules differ.

Advantage changes how you receive Parts A and B, usually through a network with drug coverage built in. Medigap sits beside Original Medicare and pays the share it leaves behind. You cannot hold both at the same time.

Every Part D plan keeps its own drug list, with tiers that set what you pay at the counter. I run your exact medicines through the list of each plan open to you before anything else gets compared.

Yes. A change period comes around near the end of every year, and certain life events open a special window in between. I look over your plan once a year so a poor fit never has to stay.