You and your spouse may need different Medicare plans. Shocking isn’t it? You do everything else with your spouse, you retired to hang out with them, BUT you may need different medical and / or prescription drug plans.
Let us explain. If you choose to go the Medicare Supplement path for your medical, you may be able to receive a household discount if you and your spouse are on the same plan. That is a plus but with a Medicare Supplement plan for your medical, you will need to add on a Medicare Part D – Prescription Drug plan to cover your prescriptions. Do you and your spouse take the same medications? Most the time the answer is no. Medicare Part D (for drugs) plans cover different medications differently. This is also known as them covering different “formularies”. Even within the same carrier, you and your spouse might be better off on different plans. Carriers can have up to 3 different Medicare Part D plans, each covering different medications at differing costs. We advise people to go with the plan that covers their medication costs the best. This is one of the places we start with when looking at your plan options.
You And Your Spouse May Need Different Medicare Plans
This may be true as well if you are going to get your Medicare coverage via Medicare Advantage plans. These plans roll into one your Medical and the prescriptions you take. We have 20 plus plans that are Medicare Advantage plans in our area, each covering medications at a different cost. We would once again encourage you to start with what medications you take and see what plan comes up best for that medication. Sometimes this is different for each spouse. Often you can save yourself a lot of money by being on different plans due to your medication. This can also be the case with Medicare Advantage plans if you have different doctors you go to.
Please take the time to look over these options with an agent, be it us or someone else who does this for a living. It could save you $$.
Rick has a two part video series on this. Check it out here.