The Traps Within Medicare - 2027 Perennial Edition: How to Spot Them, How to Avoid Them, and How to Optimize Your Healthcare at the Lowest Possible Cost (Avoid the Traps)

Medicare is a maze of pitfalls, traps and consequences wrapped in strange language and acronyms. This book will guide you over, under, around or through all of the traps lying in wait for you within the Medicare maze. In a short, enjoyable 2 or 3 hour read, you will gain an education about the problems and the solutions within the care systems that many professionals struggle to comprehend. You will become a truly informed consumer, prepared to grapple with your own set of constraints as you pass the milestone of Happy 65th!

Decisions you make at this critical time, when most new seniors are totally unprepared for the complexities ahead, will either help you or hurt you for many years to come. Many of those decisions are irrevocable. The solutions ARE affordable and relatively painless, for the well-informed. Read this book and find them.

This is Mortimer's fourth book on Medicare, fully updated for the 2027 plan year, and with a major innovation to make it a PERENNIAL EDITION: readers get an ANNUAL 4 page PDF insert by email, updating ALL major changes in the numbers and programs from Medicare, FREE OF CHARGE!

Complexity and confusion are the earmarks of this system. Words often have quite different meanings than in simple English. One small example: the word covered. When we're told that a procedure or treatment is “covered” by Medicare, our normal English interpretation is that our costs are taken care of.

This is not the case, not by a long shot. Covered, to the folks at Medicare, means that they will pay *some part* of the cost, leaving us with sometimes huge out-of-pocket expenses. And figuring out what part they will pay is far from simple.

To illustrate, consider the medical bills covered under Part B of Medicare, for a common senior procedure, a knee replacement. Medicare will confirm that a knee replacement is all covered by Part B. If you merely accept that language as plain English and assume that you can have the procedure without cost, you are in for a massive set of surprises.

Covered under Part B means, at best, 80% of the costs are actually paid by Medicare. You pay a monthly premium of $202.90 in 2026 for Part B coverage. Then you pay a deductible, $283 in 2026, upon your first use of Part B benefits in the calendar year. But the biggest surprise of all is that you still have to pay 20% of ALL the Part B charges, plus additional “excess charges if your doctor elects to bill you for more than the standard Medicare reimbursement! He or she is permitted to add up to 15% on top of the 20%, so what does “covered” wind up up looking like in the real world?

It depends ENTIRELY upon what coverage you choose to add to basic Medicare! If you go with Parts A & B only, your hip pocket bank will write a check for $12,000 to $21,000 for this procedure. Choose Medicare Advantage, perhaps $1,000. Pick Medigap/MedSupp? It could be a few hundred dollars. BUT BUT BUT-- there are many details to be explained, and ongoing costs, especially with MedSupp insurance.

OPEN ENROLLMENT PERIOD STARTS OCT. 15th AND ENDS DEC. 7th. This is when you must make these all-important decisions, and some of them are IRREVERSIBLE because of Medicare rules! If you miss certain deadlines, under some conditions, YOU CANNOT GO BACK! Please, get informed before doors start to close behind you.

Know the difference between true information and the advertising garbage that will cram your TV screen, mailbox, and inbox for the next three months. Slick marketers pitch only Medicare Advantage OR Medicare Supplements. HUGE DIFFERENCE!

Buy this book. Read it. In 2 or 3 hours you will KNOW what to do!