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Amber Posthauer: Hello, everyone. Thank you for joining us today. We're going to get started here in 60 seconds to allow for everyone to get connected. We'll get started shortly.
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Amber Posthauer: Welcome, everyone, to Navigating Healthcare Costs Before Retirement. Thank you all so much for joining us.
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Amber Posthauer: Please send questions to the Q&A located on your Zoom menu bar. We'll try our best to answer all of your questions, but if for whatever reason we're unable to get to your question today, please email learning at nfp.com.
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Amber Posthauer: Today's presentation is being recorded and will be shared in the coming days. At this time, I'd like to hand over the call to our speaker. Steve, the floor is yours.
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Steve Curry: Oh, thank you, Amber. My name is Steve Curry, I'm a certified financial planner. I'm also joined by Tim Walch, who's a Medicare expert, and he is going to be manning the chat. So, today, we're going to go over financial education, Navigating Healthcare Costs Before Retirement.
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Steve Curry: Today's agenda.
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Steve Curry: We're gonna be Medicare timing, there's 4 parts, and enrollment.
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Steve Curry: Bridging coverage if you retire before age 65.
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Steve Curry: Medigap versus Medicare Advantage and Part D drugs.
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Steve Curry: Income-related premium surcharges, like IRMA.
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Steve Curry: Using an HSA, a health savings account, before Medicare begins, and then budgeting, coverage gaps, and long-term care.
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Steve Curry: Okay, know your timing and coverage.
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Steve Curry: So… Medicare eligibility begins at age 65. There are 4 parts before you choose,
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Steve Curry: Part A, hospitalization, that is inpatient, skilled nursing and hospice. Usually you pay into it during your career, so it's not really a charge. You have to work 40 quarters in order to be eligible for it, but most people do.
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Steve Curry: Part B, which is the medical part, which is doctor visits, outpatient preventative screening, durable medical equipment, things like that, there is a fee for that that you pay, and we'll go over that a little bit more.
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Steve Curry: Part C is the Medicare Advantage part. So there's really two parts if you want to, get on Medicare. There's your Medicare Traditional, and then there's Medicare Advantage, which is Part C, which are private insurers that bundle Part A and B, and usually add drugs and potentially dental and vision.
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Steve Curry: Part D, as in David, is prescription drugs.
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Steve Curry: It's standalone coverage that pairs with bridge…
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Steve Curry: Each plan has its own formulary and drug list we'll be going into a little bit, so we want to make sure you choose wisely. Bottom line, one Medicare has two parts, two choices sit alongside it.
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Steve Curry: Okay? Your enrollment window is narrow, and a late enrollment penalty lasts for a lifetime. So, initial enrollment period is 7 months in total.
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Steve Curry: The 3 months before your 65th birthday month.
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Steve Curry: That month itself, and then 3 months after. So, enrolling early avoids a coverage gap. You don't want to enroll late, so you do have a 7-month period, and we recommend that you take advantage of that.
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Steve Curry: If you're still working at 65, if you have an active employer coverage through a larger employer, that qualifies as credible. You may delay Part B without a penalty. So that's always a big question for us. Can I continue to work, and do I have to do Part B? The answer is you can continue to do your, employer
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Steve Curry: eligible plan and delay Part B, potentially.
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Steve Curry: Smaller employers often have different rules, so groups under 20 employees, if you work for one of those employers, Medicare is primary on that when you hit 65. So these are for employers that are above 20 employees.
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Steve Curry: There are special enrollment periods. When qualifying employer coverage ends, an 8-month window opens to enroll in Part B without a late penalty.
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Steve Curry: Part D has its own much shorter window.
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Steve Curry: Verify before you assume.
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Steve Curry: There's retiree plans, and there's COBRA. Usually do not count as credible coverage for Part B.
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Steve Curry: That's one of the misnomers out there, is that, when people are on COBRA, they think everything's gonna be credible, and that's not the case. If your retirement plan is credible, make sure you get written confirmation from your benefits team before you delay anything.
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Steve Curry: Bottom line, confirm your timing well before your 65th birthday.
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Steve Curry: Okay. So, retiring before 65 means bridging coverage of your own. So, if
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Steve Curry: You want to retire before 65,
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Steve Curry: You gotta watch a few things. First, watch the income interaction.
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Steve Curry: Large Roth conversions, capital gains, if you sell a rental property, these things can affect your income. And when you're going to the marketplace to potentially apply for a subsidy.
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Steve Curry: This could be bad for it, meaning that if you make too much dollars, you will not necessarily get a good subsidy. Now, subsidies go all the way from, depending on which state you're in, from 100 to 138% of family poverty line to 400%.
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Steve Curry: So, depending if you fall in that is what kind of subsidy you can get.
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Steve Curry: COBRA continuation. You can keep your current plan at your doctor… at your employer. If you're 20 employees and more in your company, then COBRA applies. Keeps your current plan and doctors, and it's generally up to 18 months. But you do pay the full premium, plus a 2% administrative fee.
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Steve Curry: Marketplace coverage. If you do go to the individual market, there's marketplace coverage through the ACA. It usually costs less than COBRA, and the premium subsidies are tied to your income, like I mentioned before.
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Steve Curry: One thing you can look into, too, is if you lose coverage, in a qualifying life event, sometimes you can join your spouse's plan. Usually have up to 30 days to join that plan.
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Steve Curry: So, on this, bottom line, the years between your last day of work and age 65 are the costliest, and we're gonna go a little bit more into that soon.
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Steve Curry: Okay, retiring before, here we go.
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Steve Curry: compare employer and Retiree coverage against Medicare before you decide. So.
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Steve Curry: Ask your benefits team. Request written confirmation whether your plan is credible coverage for Part B and Part D. This is… this is incredibly important, because some plans are not. And don't take it verbally. Make sure you get it in writing from your HR department or your benefits department.
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Steve Curry: They're a compare tool costs, total costs.
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Steve Curry: When you look at healthcare, you have to look not only what you're paying in premium, but also deductibles, coinsurances, out-of-pockets. So, you gotta weigh your premiums and all those other things I just mentioned. So, you look at your employer coverage.
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Steve Curry: Sometimes it wins, and sometimes Medicare wins. Now, if you're still working, you're probably getting some subsidy from your employer on your employer plan health insurance. So keep that in mind, because when you go off to Medicare, you're on your own, there's no employer subsidy for that.
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Steve Curry: Check family coverage. If your spouse or dependent relies on your plan, confirm what happens if they're covered. If you go to Medicare, what happens if they're coverage? They may need to get their own plan if you go to Medicare.
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Steve Curry: I'll mind the handoff. Line up start and end dates, so nothing is passed, uncovered.
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Steve Curry: Dropping employer coverage without having coverage in place, don't do it. Wait till you have the other coverage in place, and then you can drop your coverage. So again, bottom line?
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Steve Curry: Coordination prevents both coverage gaps and avoidable penalties.
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Steve Curry: Okay. Choose and fund your coverage.
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Steve Curry: Okay, Medigap and Medicare Advantage solve the same problem for very different ways. To the left, you see the Medigap. To the right, you see the Medicare Advantage. Medigap is traditional Medicare.
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Steve Curry: And it works with any provider that accepts Medicare nationwide. So no matter if you travel within the States, you'll be able to go to Medicare-accepting physicians.
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Steve Curry: No networks and no referrals to see a specialist.
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Steve Curry: This is more what they call an indemnity product, where you can go anywhere you want. Higher monthly premium, more predictable costs.
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Steve Curry: Pairs separately with Part D drug plan.
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Steve Curry: And guarantee issue rights are time-limited after Part B begins.
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Steve Curry: So, like I mentioned before, Tim's in the chat. If there's any questions on Medigap policies or Medicare, feel free to put it in the chat, and Tim can go ahead and answer them. And I also do recommend reaching out, my person is Tim in Illinois, but if you're in a different state, you can reach out to your Medicare specialist, and they can run through the options for you.
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Steve Curry: Bottom line, choose what, based on your provider's travel tolerance and out-of-pocket costs.
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Steve Curry: So, for Medicare Advantage plans to the right.
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Steve Curry: You use a particular provider. A lot of these either have a PPO provider or an HMO provider, and it may require referrals.
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Steve Curry: But, these plans work more like your employer plan, where it bundles drug, dental, and vision coverage sometimes.
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Steve Curry: Lower monthly premiums with an annual out-of-pocket. So if you're used to your employer plan that you have a deductible, a coinsurance, and then you have an out-of-pocket, it works very similar to those a lot of the times.
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Steve Curry: You pay more as you actually use it. Under traditional Medicare, a lot of it is covered. Medicare covers about 80% of your claims, and the 20% is that Medigap policy I spoke to before. But when you're on a Medicare Advantage plan, you pay more as you actually use it, just like you did on your employer plan.
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Steve Curry: You can change plans each year during open enrollment.
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Steve Curry: Okay. Prescription Drug Plan D. Match your prescription list plan for me before you enroll. So, what I recommend is talking to a Medicare specialist. What you should do is list your medications. Write down every prescription and dosage and frequency.
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Steve Curry: And what you'll be able to do is give that to the Medicare specialist, and they'll be able to run it through a system to see what, Medicare Part D plan is best for you.
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Steve Curry: Check the formulary, and the Medicare specialist can actually help you do this. The more, drugs that you have on the formulary, the better it will be for you, because you also want to know if there's prior authorization or step therapy.
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Steve Curry: Estimate the full year costs. So, a lot of, folks, when they're shopping for Medicare Part D plans, what happens is they just look at what their out-of-pocket is for the premium. And that not necessarily is the best thing. It's not necessarily.
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Steve Curry: Because you need to do this, is you add 12 months of your premium, the deductible, and expected copays all together, because your cost is not just what you pay in premium for Medicare Part D, but what happens to all your out-of-pocket costs.
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Steve Curry: for that year that you're going to be using it. And one thing, too, is that you should review every year. Formularies change, farm meeting networks change, it's something you should just do every single year. Don't just say, set it and forget it for the long term.
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Steve Curry: And the bottom line on this one is the lowest premium is rarely the lowest total cost. So do your homework.
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Steve Curry: Okay. Higher income 2 years, can raise your Medicare premiums today. So, Medicare Part B is on a sliding scale, and so is Part D as in David. Now, Part B is more drastic than Part D, so we're going to talk more about Part B here. So, higher income means higher premium.
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Steve Curry: So what happens is, what the government does is that they look back 2 years. Okay, so say you are, in this year right now, they'll go back 2 years to look at how much money you make.
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Steve Curry: And there's a thing called IRMA, which is the top right, says how IRMA works. When you go above certain thresholds, okay.
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Steve Curry: Medicare puts a surcharge on it for Part B and D, and Part B is substantial. That can go upwards of over $700, a month for each of you, that's you and your spouse that are on Medicare Part D. So, it is a 2-year look-back.
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Steve Curry: The surcharge is set on modified adjusted gross income, and it's the tax return that you filed.
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Steve Curry: Now, if something happens, and Tim would be better at this, so if you need a question, you can ask him. If retirement, the loss of a spouse, a reduction of hours or quality, you can have a surcharge recalculated or, on your current income. So there are, I guess, some exceptions that you could potentially try to appeal this.
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Steve Curry: Bottom line on this one is watch out, because one thing on Irma folks don't necessarily know is that any kind of large capital gains, or any… say you sell a rental unit, or something happens, you get this big boost in income, that can affect your surcharge looking 2 years back. So plan accordingly.
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Steve Curry: Okay. HSA, Health Savings Accounts.
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Steve Curry: Health savings accounts have been very prevalent in the last 10 years. A lot of employer groups have been moving their group health insurance to HSAs.
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Steve Curry: And you can contribute, to your HSA while you have a qualifying plan. So, leading up to retirement, try to put as many dollars as you can in your health savings account if you're eligible for a health savings account.
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Steve Curry: When you work, when you go ahead and sign up for Medicare and enroll, okay.
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Steve Curry: that you have to stop contributing to an HSA. The reason for it is because you have to be enrolled in a qualifying high-deductible health plan in order to put money into an HSA, so right when you go onto Medicare, that kicks you off that, so you can no longer put money into an HSA. But.
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Steve Curry: You can still use all those funds in there to fund certain things and healthcare expenses going forward. So, it's not that you have to drain it right away, you can leave it in there and use it for healthcare costs.
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Steve Curry: Part A, there's a 6-month look-back. So if you are on an HSA plan right now, and you're thinking about retiring and going on to Medicare, I would stop the employer and employee contributions 6 months prior, because you don't want to be in a situation where if you go ahead at, say, 66, you take Medicare in July, what will happen is that
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Steve Curry: it'll go back 6 months to start, the look-back period. And in those 6 months, there could be problems if you put money into your HSA. You'd actually have to take it out of your HSA, because that's excess contributions into it. I know that sounds funny, but that's how the law works right now.
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Steve Curry: And again, in step number 4 in retirement, your balances stay with you, with no deadline.
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Steve Curry: It pays for many different things. The one thing that I want to mention on this is your HSA balance, it cannot pay for a Medigap policy. So, on traditional, Medicare, and you buy that Medigap policy, it cannot pay for it. But.
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Steve Curry: It can pay for your Medicare Advantage plans, Part C plan.
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Steve Curry: So that's a big difference between the two. So if you happen to have an HSA with a lot of dollars in it, you may want to look at Medicare Advantage plans, because you can use that for the premiums for a Medicare Advantage plan.
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Steve Curry: You can all… you also use HSA dollars for dental, vision, co-pays, out-of-pockets, anything to do with medical. So if there's a balance still remaining in your HSA, use it wisely, and try to fund it as much as you possibly can before you retire.
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Steve Curry: Okay, budget for more than premiums.
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Steve Curry: Healthcare costs, inflation. So, historically, healthcare has been rising. This is my 38th year in healthcare as well.
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Steve Curry: And I can tell you that it's gone up quite a bit. This particular year, we have an average trend of 9%, and that 9% is the largest in 15 years.
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Steve Curry: So, be prepared for not only employer plans to go up, but individual plans to go up as well. And what inflation basically means is that if something, if you're using 9% trend, they call it, if something cost $100 last year, this year it's going to cost $109, and it's been compounding for years.
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Steve Curry: What Medicare skips? Something in Medicare, if you don't get an advantage plan, that may cover some of these things, but if you do the traditional Medicare, it will not pay for dental, vision, or hearing care. So you want to basically say, okay, do I want to put enough money aside to pay for those things in retirement, or potentially get some of those things in the Medicare Advantage plan?
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Steve Curry: And we'll talk about long-term care here in a minute.
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Steve Curry: Out of pockets and deductibles. So, you need to budget for deductibles, co-pays, and coinsurance.
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Steve Curry: Like I mentioned before, on the Medicare Advantage plan, you usually have a deductible in coinsurance and out-of-pockets, sometimes, and on a traditional Medicare plan, you're gonna have some deductible that you're probably gonna have to take care of. So, put some money aside and budget for those.
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Steve Curry: The reoccurring premiums, again, I mentioned before, Part B,
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Steve Curry: Part D, and either the Medigap policy that I talked about, or the Advantage Premium.
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Steve Curry: plus income-related surcharges for higher earners. That was that IRMA that I talked about. So, on this, bottom line.
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Steve Curry: Healthcare deserves its own line item in your retirement income planning.
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Steve Curry: Okay, dental, vision, hearing, our costs for Medicare are never built to cover. As I mentioned before, Medicare on its own does not cover dental, like cleanings and fillings and crowns.
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Steve Curry: Sometimes on your Medicare Advantage plan, they could cover that, if you choose to go that direction.
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Steve Curry: Under the vision plan, routine eye exams, glasses, contacts are not covered, unless they're medically necessary, such as cataract surgery, are covered. So anything medically necessary, they'll cover vision, and dental for that matter of fact, that if something on dental that more falls in the medical, it will be covered on your medical plan.
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Steve Curry: Hearing. Fittings and hearings are not covered, so typically, we'd like you to put money aside for those things.
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Steve Curry: Again, at the here, some Medicare Advantage plans bundle limited benefits. Standalone dental or vision policies do exist, so if you do decide to take traditional Medicare and not Medicare Advantage, there are standalone dental and vision policies out there that you can purchase on an individual basis. Also, as I mentioned.
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Steve Curry: HSA dollars, pay these costs tax-free. So, again, utilize your HSA dollars. That's what you put it in there for in the first place. So, bottom line, these are routine, predictable expenses. Budget for them in retirement.
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Steve Curry: Okay, long-term care. Long-term care is the largest uncovered risk, and when it comes to financial planning, it's one of the biggest gaps that we see. Now, Medicare is not the answer.
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Steve Curry: Medicare, it covers limited skilled nursing and anything qualified, hospital stay, not extended custodial stay. So, what are long-term care
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Steve Curry: what are those things that you need it for? Well, long-term care is if you can't, there's 6 ADLs, Activity of Daily Living. On these 6 ADLs, they're like dressing yourself, bathing yourself, incontinence,
00:20:47.970 --> 00:20:56.300
Steve Curry: It is moving from bed to chair, it's feeding yourself, things like that. Those are 6 ADLs, I call them.
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Steve Curry: So, long-term care can kick in if you cannot do 2 out of those 6. Now, if you get dementia or Alzheimer's, you usually qualify automatically.
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Steve Curry: Now, there's a few different ways that you can purchase long-term care, or finance long-term care, shall we say. Under traditional long-term care insurance, this buys the most benefit per dollar.
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Steve Curry: Premiums are not guaranteed, and the carriers in the past have raised rates on older policies. When long-term care first came out many years ago, the actuaries did not, price it correctly. And we've seen 30, 40, 50% rate increases on certain blocks of business. Now.
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Steve Curry: A carrier cannot go to you and raise yours alone. They have to go for a whole block. They have to look at a whole sector, and they actually have to go to the states that they're in and say, we need to raise these because of loss ratios. Now, there's a couple reasons why people don't buy traditional long-term care insurance. One is because it's expensive.
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Steve Curry: It is.
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Steve Curry: Two, if you don't use it, you sometimes lose it. Most of the time you do lose it. So.
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Steve Curry: On a case in point, I had a client that had a 10 pay, meaning that they paid over 10 years, and unfortunately, in the 11th year, he had a stroke, he passed away, and his wife called me and said, can I get any of these premiums back? And the answer was no, because it was a traditional long-term care plan, and they paid into it.
00:22:27.470 --> 00:22:34.809
Steve Curry: Hoping that they'd be able to use it one day when they're really old, but it didn't happen that way. He passed away, and so they lost that benefit.
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Steve Curry: So, since, I would say X amount of years ago, hybrid life and annuity, by the way, are a different way of funding long-term care. So what they are, they're life chassis and annuity chassis that actually have a long-term care rider attached to it.
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Steve Curry: And what it does on this particular hybrid life, it combines a death benefit with long-term care access, so the premium is never lost. So when you buy one of these products, three things can happen. One, you purchase it, you can use it for long-term care, that's why you purchased it in the first place.
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Steve Curry: Two, if there's a death, there's a death benefit that is attached to it, so your beneficiary gets a death benefit.
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Steve Curry: And three, if you want to cash it in, there are some plans that give X amount of the premium you put in after, say, 7 or 10 years, whenever that period is over, you can get X amount of your dollars back if you want to cash it in, but most folks don't cash it in because they buy it for long-term strategy. So, the reason we like these hybrid life and long-term care more is because of those three things, that
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Steve Curry: The money that you put in, you're not gonna necessarily lose any of that money.
00:23:43.900 --> 00:23:52.380
Steve Curry: So, we do recommend looking at those. As well, if you want to look at the traditional long-term care, that's fine too. It's… everything has their purpose.
00:23:52.450 --> 00:24:08.909
Steve Curry: Now, for clients that have more assets, they do self-funding. So, they can work, it where they basically, they're living off the interest of their investments, let's say. They're actually self-funding as it comes along. So, they do that, too. So…
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Steve Curry: Try to get, long… if you're going to buy long-term care insurance, the earlier you get it, the better, because it's less expensive.
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Steve Curry: Options narrow and cost more as you age, so evaluate them early. The one thing about the traditional long-term care and the hybrid life, annuity long-term care, is you have to qualify with your health, meaning that there's going to be health questions around it, and they're going to do a cognitive test as well to make sure that you are,
00:24:34.410 --> 00:24:37.240
Steve Curry: Okay, right now, while you're getting the insurance.
00:24:39.890 --> 00:24:40.780
Steve Curry: Okay.
00:24:43.090 --> 00:24:55.560
Steve Curry: Sorry about that. Four avoidable mistakes cause most healthcare surprises in retirement. So, there's four mistakes that you really want to look at to make sure that you don't miss these. So, missing the enrollment window.
00:24:55.670 --> 00:25:14.730
Steve Curry: Don't do it. If you're coming up on 65, get the information. Even if you think you're gonna still work past 65, still reach out to a Medicare expert or Social Security, get the facts. Make sure you know this before you go into it, because assuming coverage is automatic.
00:25:14.730 --> 00:25:23.280
Steve Curry: or that the Retirement Plan counts as credible can trigger a penalty. Again, asking your HR department, is our plan credible for Medicare?
00:25:23.670 --> 00:25:26.770
Steve Curry: Shopping, on premium alone.
00:25:26.770 --> 00:25:43.810
Steve Curry: One of the biggest mistakes out there is that when people are shopping for Medicare… Medigap policies, or Medicare Advantage, or Medicare Part D policies, they're looking for the cheapest premium, and that's not necessarily what is going to be the best for you. You want to take a look at the premium.
00:25:43.810 --> 00:25:55.739
Steve Curry: The deductibles, the co-pays, the out-of-pockets, the drug tiers, the formularies, you want to put everything into consideration, because it's total cost that you want to look at, not just the premium costs.
00:25:56.470 --> 00:26:06.170
Steve Curry: Number 3, setting it and forgetting it. Don't do this. Plans often change formulas, and this is more the Medicare Part D plan for prescriptions.
00:26:06.170 --> 00:26:20.139
Steve Curry: Plans change formularies, networks, and costs every year. So, skipping the fall review is, is not a good idea. Definitely get reviewed every single year to make sure that you're on the right plan.
00:26:20.140 --> 00:26:32.050
Steve Curry: Because when it comes to Medicare Part D, what happens is that you might get on new prescriptions during the year. So you want to make sure you've got the right Part D planned for you by all the new prescriptions that you're taking.
00:26:32.810 --> 00:26:51.820
Steve Curry: Ignoring the surviving spouse. This happens. A long-term care event or death of a spouse changes income tax brackets and coverage. So when you're planning for retirement, not from just the employer standpoint on their plan, but on Medicare, you plan for both spouses, not just one.
00:26:53.280 --> 00:26:58.140
Steve Curry: Bottom line, every one of these is preventable with conversations beforehand.
00:26:58.140 --> 00:27:15.000
Steve Curry: If you're looking for Medicare, go to a Medicare expert. And on the individual side, we actually, NFP has a division for individual medical coverage that you can visit. And for long-term care, I'm going to give you my information here soon. You can always reach out to us with any questions on long-term care.
00:27:17.910 --> 00:27:22.649
Steve Curry: Okay, start these 4 steps in the year before you turn 65.
00:27:24.860 --> 00:27:39.989
Steve Curry: Okay, confirm timing. Mark your 7th month enrollment window, and get written confirmation of whether your current coverage counts as credible. I've said this a few times, and the reason I keep repeating this is because so many folks don't do this. Get that in writing.
00:27:40.040 --> 00:27:44.060
Steve Curry: Compare coverage. I would recommend going to a Medicare specialist.
00:27:44.060 --> 00:28:08.990
Steve Curry: like Tim on the line here, weigh Medigap against Medicare Advantage, using your own doctors, your travel plans, and cost predictability you want. Now, sometimes if you travel outside of the country, you want to make sure that you're either… if your Medigap doesn't cover it, see if your Medicare Advantage would cover it, and if not, you might want to, buy an additional policy to cover you outside when you go to Europe or around the world.
00:28:09.520 --> 00:28:18.709
Steve Curry: Price your drugs, run your full medication list through Part D plans, like I mentioned, available to you, and compare total annual costs, not just the premium.
00:28:18.830 --> 00:28:34.170
Steve Curry: And then the last thing is maximize your HSA contributions while eligible. Project your healthcare budgeting and review long-term care options. This tends to be the third or fourth largest expenditure when it comes to retirement.
00:28:34.170 --> 00:28:39.540
Steve Curry: So, bottom line, a short checklist now prevents expensive corrections later.
00:28:42.680 --> 00:28:43.630
Steve Curry: Okay.
00:28:43.870 --> 00:28:47.729
Steve Curry: Tim, I know you've been, I think, probably answering some questions.
00:28:48.880 --> 00:28:49.800
Timothy Walch: I have been.
00:28:50.140 --> 00:28:52.980
Steve Curry: Okay. Is there anything that we need to address?
00:28:53.370 --> 00:28:59.079
Timothy Walch: Yeah, if we could, had a question, what age is considered early for long-term care?
00:28:59.400 --> 00:29:08.030
Steve Curry: Good, good question. So, I would start looking at long-term care, 60s, early 60s.
00:29:09.340 --> 00:29:28.599
Steve Curry: And there's nothing really late. I mean, once you hit your 80s, it's late, but if you start looking in 60, that'll give you your best options. And again, if you do decide to utilize us, we'll look at the traditional way, like we talked about, and the life and the annuity chassis way to see what best fits your situation.
00:29:34.080 --> 00:29:35.840
Steve Curry: Any other questions, Tim?
00:29:36.950 --> 00:29:44.780
Timothy Walch: None at this time, however… oh, wait, that one came through. Is the presentation going to be offered again so colleagues can attend?
00:29:46.150 --> 00:29:47.790
Steve Curry: It's fine with me. Amber?
00:29:50.060 --> 00:29:55.749
Amber Posthauer: We'll be sending the recording out as well, so that can be forwarded to anyone that missed the session.
00:29:56.760 --> 00:30:09.189
Timothy Walch: And then also, too, scheduling 101 appointments, again, I had sent the link over in the chat for on the health side, however, with long-term care, if you wanted to reach out to Steve, his information's right there as well, too.
00:30:09.340 --> 00:30:12.249
Timothy Walch: I'm gonna post that again one more time in the chat for everybody.
00:30:15.780 --> 00:30:30.660
Steve Curry: And we can, other than all the information we just went over on this presentation, again, I'm a servo financial planner, so we can talk about anything when it comes to retirement. And there's no charge for that. You can just call me, we can discuss, I can help you out, and you can take it from there.
00:30:42.530 --> 00:30:49.059
Amber Posthauer: All right, well, I'll go ahead and close this out. Thank you, Steve, for sharing your valuable time and expertise with us today.
00:30:49.160 --> 00:30:53.869
Amber Posthauer: To reiterate, today's presentation was recorded, and we'll be sharing the recording in the coming days.
00:30:54.060 --> 00:31:05.249
Amber Posthauer: At the end of this call, a survey will populate in a new window. Please take a brief moment to complete the survey, as it lets us know what topics are important to our listeners, and helps make our education program as current and relevant as possible.
00:31:05.430 --> 00:31:10.169
Amber Posthauer: That concludes our webinar for today. Thank you, everyone, for joining us, and have a great day!
As you approach retirement, healthcare costs become one of the most important pieces of your financial plan. With thoughtful preparation, you can reduce surprises and protect your financial security. Below is a practical guide to help you navigate healthcare costs before and as you transition to retirement
What to focus on now:
- Understand your timing and coverage options
- Coordinate with any current employer or retiree benefits
- Decide on supplemental coverage wisely
- Plan for prescription drugs
- Use tax-advantaged accounts where possible
- Budget for future healthcare needs
- Consider long-term care planning