How Medicare Affects Your Health Benefits Coverage

Video Transcript

"This is John Pinelli, financial representative, talking to you today about how Medicare affects your health insurance coverages. So Medicare is a government-provided program aimed at seniors over the age of 65. Now, the reason for Medicare is to provide low-cost, affordable health insurance coverage to senior citizens. They can obtain additional coverage through Medicare programs, but those will have some cost associated with obtaining that higher level of coverage. These would be programs like a Medicare Advantage or a Medicare prescription program because just the basic, original Medicare does not cover all medical expenses. So it's important to really understand what's being covered by Medicare and what's not. Medicare is not, by any means, a comprehensive health solution for individuals. So looking at a program like Medicare Advantage, which would cover a lot more comprehensive medical potential problems that could occur, and also a Medicare prescription plan to cover prescription drugs may be something that would be important to a lot of senior citizens, especially with the rising costs of health care. However, these programs are fairly cheap when compared to typical health insurance carriers like Kaiser, BlueShield BlueCross. Medicare's is often a very good option for senior citizens."