Medicare in four minutes

The written version of Medicare in four minutes

Medicare in four minutes is deliberately short. Four minutes is enough to give you the shape of the program and not much else, and some things genuinely need numbers attached. What follows is the same ground in writing, with the 2026 figures filled in.

Read it if you prefer text to video, if you have watched Medicare in four minutes and want the detail underneath it, if you want to check a figure the video mentions in passing, or if you are helping a parent and want something you can point at. Everything below is current for calendar year 2026 and comes from Medicare, CMS and the Social Security Administration. Figures for 2027 are published each autumn, and we update this page when they are.

Part A, and the deductible Medicare in four minutes cannot dwell on

Part A covers inpatient hospital stays, skilled nursing after a qualifying hospital stay, hospice and some home health care. Most people pay no premium for it, because they or a spouse paid Medicare taxes for at least 40 quarters, about ten years of work.

If you have fewer than 40 quarters you can still buy it: $311 a month with 30 to 39 quarters, $565 a month with fewer than 30.

The 2026 inpatient deductible is $1,736. Here is the part Medicare in four minutes cannot pause on: that is not an annual deductible. It applies per benefit period. A benefit period starts when you are admitted and ends after you have been out of a hospital or skilled nursing facility for 60 consecutive days. Go back in after that and a new deductible applies. Two separate hospitalisations in one year can mean paying it twice.

Beyond day 60 of a stay, you pay $434 a day through day 90. After that you draw on 60 lifetime reserve days at $868 a day, and once those are used they are gone for good. In a skilled nursing facility, days 1 to 20 are covered in full and days 21 to 100 cost $217 a day.

Part B, and the 20 percent with no ceiling

Part B covers doctor visits, outpatient care, lab work, durable medical equipment and most preventive services. The standard premium for 2026 is $202.90 a month and the annual deductible is $283.

After the deductible you generally pay 20 percent of the Medicare-approved amount. That percentage has no annual cap. Twenty percent of a routine visit is trivial; twenty percent of a year of specialist infusions is not, and nothing in Original Medicare stops it climbing. This is the single most important sentence on this page, and it is the reason the fork in the road exists at all.

Higher earners pay more for Part B through an income-related adjustment. The 2026 amount is based on the income reported on your 2024 tax return. Single filers up to $109,000 and joint filers up to $218,000 pay the standard $202.90. Above that the total rises through bands, reaching $689.90 a month for single filers at $500,000 or more. There is a matching adjustment on Part D.

If your income has dropped since 2024 because you retired, sold a business or lost a spouse, you can ask Social Security to use current figures instead. That form is one of the most valuable pieces of paper in Medicare and one of the least filed.

Part D, and the cap that is genuinely new since Medicare in four minutes was filmed

Part D covers prescriptions you take at home. For 2026 the maximum deductible a plan may charge is $615, and out-of-pocket spending on covered drugs is capped at $2,100 for the year. Once you reach it you pay nothing more for covered drugs until January.

That cap replaced the old coverage gap and it is a real change for anyone on expensive medication. There is also a Medicare Prescription Payment Plan, which every Part D plan must offer: it spreads your drug costs across monthly installments rather than leaving you with a large bill in January. It does not reduce what you pay, only when you pay it, which suits some households and not others.

Formularies differ enormously between plans. The right Part D plan is the cheapest one that covers your specific drugs at your specific pharmacy, and that is a different plan for almost everybody. It is also the thing most likely to change on you at the turn of a year.

The fork in the road from Medicare in four minutes, with numbers attached

Once you have Part A and Part B, you choose one of two structures. Medicare in four minutes describes the choice; here is what sits underneath it.

Route one: Original Medicare, plus a Medicare Supplement, plus a Part D plan. You keep any provider in the country who accepts Medicare, with no networks and no referrals. The supplement covers most or all of the gaps Original Medicare leaves. You pay three premiums: Part B, the supplement, and the drug plan.

Route two: a Medicare Advantage plan. A private plan takes over your Part A and Part B coverage, usually bundles in drug coverage, and often adds dental, vision, hearing or a fitness benefit. Premiums are frequently low or zero on top of Part B. In exchange you accept a network, often referrals, and prior authorization on some services. Every plan must cap your annual out-of-pocket spending — for 2026, CMS limits that cap to $9,250 in network, or $13,900 combined for a PPO. Many plans set theirs lower.

Neither route is better. They fail in different directions. Route one costs more every month and protects you against a catastrophic year with almost no admin. Route two costs less every month, gives you extras you will probably use, and asks you to work inside a network on the year something goes wrong.

Why the first choice weighs more than the later ones

This is the piece Medicare in four minutes has no room for, and it is the one that costs people money.

Moving from route one to route two is easy at any annual enrollment. Moving back is not. Your Medicare Supplement open enrollment is a single six-month window that begins when you are both 65 and enrolled in Part B. During it no insurer may refuse you or charge you more because of your health. It does not come back.

After it, unless you qualify for a guaranteed-issue situation, a supplement application is medically underwritten and can be declined. Federal law provides two one-time trial rights: if you took an Advantage plan when you first became eligible at 65, or you dropped a supplement to try Advantage for the first time, you can go back without health questions provided you act within twelve months and apply no more than 63 days after the Advantage coverage ends.

Some states are more generous. Connecticut, New York and Massachusetts require supplements to be available year round, and around ten states run birthday or anniversary rules reopening a short annual window. Mississippi has none of these. Nevada does, and lets you change insurer. Illinois does, but only within the same company. Where you live changes the answer.

The dates Medicare in four minutes lists, in one place

Four windows do almost all the work, and missing one is the most common expensive mistake in Medicare.

• Initial Enrollment Period — seven months around your 65th birthday: the three months before your birthday month, that month, and the three months after. Sign up before your birthday month and coverage starts the month you turn 65; sign up during or after and it starts the following month.
• Annual Enrollment Period — October 15 to December 7 each year, for coverage starting January 1. This is when you change Advantage or Part D plans.
• Medicare Advantage Open Enrollment — January 1 to March 31. If you are already in an Advantage plan you get one change: to another Advantage plan, or back to Original Medicare with a drug plan.
• General Enrollment Period — January 1 to March 31, for people who missed their initial window. Coverage now begins the first of the month after you enroll. Older guidance saying it starts in July is out of date.

Late enrollment penalties for Part B and Part D last as long as you have the coverage, which in practice means for life. They are avoidable and they are the reason to look at the calendar rather than wait to feel ready.

Help paying for it, which is badly underclaimed

Neither program gets a mention in Medicare in four minutes, and both deserve one. Two programs cut Medicare costs substantially for people under set income and asset limits, and large numbers of eligible people never apply because they assume they earn too much.

The Medicare Savings Programs pay your Part B premium and, at the top level, your deductibles and coinsurance too. For 2026 in most states, the Qualified Medicare Beneficiary level runs to about $1,350 a month for one person and $1,824 for a couple, with countable resources up to $9,950 and $14,910. Two further levels reach roughly $1,616 and $1,816 a month for an individual. Several states are more generous than the federal floor or apply no asset test at all.

Extra Help reduces Part D costs, and for 2026 the income limit is about $23,940 for one person and $32,460 for a couple, with resource limits near $18,090 and $36,100. The partial subsidy was abolished in 2024, so everyone who qualifies now gets the full one. That change alone moved a lot of people from modest help to substantial help without their knowing.

Not all income counts, and not all assets count — your home and your car are generally excluded. This is exactly the sort of thing worth ten minutes on the phone rather than a guess.

What to do after Medicare in four minutes

Watching Medicare in four minutes gives you the vocabulary. Turning it into a decision needs three specific things about you: your county, because plan availability is set at county level; your prescriptions with doses, because that determines the drug plan; and the doctors and hospitals you intend to keep, because that determines whether a network works.

With those three, a county’s worth of plans narrows to a short list in one conversation. You can do that yourself at Medicare.gov, with a free state counselor, or with us. It costs you nothing in all three cases.

Questions people ask about Medicare in four minutes

Is four minutes really enough to understand Medicare?

No, and it is not meant to be. Medicare in four minutes is built to give you the map, not the journey. It tells you what the four parts are, how they fit together, and where the one significant decision sits. Everything with a dollar sign attached changes every January, which is why those figures live in the written section above rather than in the video.

What four minutes does do well is stop you being sold something before you know the vocabulary. If you can explain the difference between Part B and Part D, and you know that a Medicare Supplement and a Medicare Advantage plan are alternatives rather than companions, you are already harder to mislead than most people at their first appointment.

How do I know the video is not out of date?

Fair question, and the honest answer is that any Medicare explainer more than a year old should be treated with suspicion. We keep Medicare in four minutes to structural facts that do not move — what each part covers, how the enrollment windows work, why the first supplement decision is different from the ones after it. Premiums, deductibles and caps are deliberately kept out of the audio and updated here in text instead.

Two dates matter for that. Medicare Advantage and Part D plan details for the following year are published on October 1. The Part A and Part B figures usually arrive in November. If you are watching this in the autumn, check which year the numbers on this page refer to before quoting them at anyone.

I am still working at 65. Does any of this apply yet?

Partly, and this is the most common situation Medicare in four minutes cannot cover properly. If you have genuine employer coverage through active employment at a large enough employer, you may be able to delay Part B without penalty. If your employer is small, or the coverage is retiree coverage or COBRA rather than active employment, delaying can be an expensive mistake that follows you for life.

The rule turns on the size of the employer and whether the employment is current. It is worth one phone call to establish which side of that line you are on, well before your birthday rather than after it.

Can I share this with a parent or a friend?

Please do. There is nothing gated here, no form in front of the video, and no requirement to give us anything to watch it. Medicare in four minutes exists because we would rather have conversations with people who already know the basics.

If you are helping someone else, the written section above is usually the more useful half to send, because they can read it at their own pace and go back to a figure twice. A great many people watch Medicare in four minutes, feel clearer for a day, and then find the specifics have evaporated. The text is there for exactly that moment.

Where to go next

Medicare in four minutes is an orientation, not a plan review. These pages carry the detail.

• Medicare explained in plain language, the full overview with 2026 costs
• New to Medicare, if you are approaching 65
• Original Medicare, what Parts A and B actually cover
• Medicare Advantage and Medigap, the two paths compared
• Part D, and the penalty for waiting

The official starting point is Medicare.gov, and free unbiased counseling is available through your State Health Insurance Assistance Program.