About Medicare Coverage For Veterans

Hey! I want to talk to you today about veterans and coverage under Medicare supplement, Medicare prescription drug plans, and Medicare Advantage plans for people who are veterans, and actually it’s a pretty straightforward conversation.

People who are veterans who have things like Tricare for life, or Champs VA, or have a spouse who works for the veterans who are– who’s a veteran, those are conversations that we really need to understand the type of coverage you have. A lot of people who have Tricare for life really don’t need other types of coverage unless there are some areas of their Tricare for life that are not covering them. Things like a gym membership or maybe some dental insurance or, you know, over-the-counter items that could be covered, or chiropractic. I mean, there’s some things that we’ve helped people who have Tricare for life, and it made sense for that person to sign up for a Medicare Advantage plan. But, a lot of times when you have Tricare for life, you really do not need any other type of insurance as far as health insurance goes. You should definitely be looking outside of that, you know, some cancer policies and maybe heart attack and stroke and dental, vision, hearing. There are some things that might fit in, but if you’re on Tricare for life, that’s usually fantastic coverage and you don’t really need anything else unless you want some of those extra benefits.

Now, let’s talk about someone who just has veterans and they’re only getting prescription drugs from the VA. That’s a different story. We still want to talk about it, we still want to understand the type of coverage you’re getting from the VA. We want to understand what’s being covered for you and at what facilities, and sometimes you don’t need anything else and we’ll tell you that. I mean, I’ve had lots of clients that sit across the table from me, and we’ve had very honest discussions and they don’t need anything else, and we’ll be happy to tell you that. We want to make sure we’re putting people in policies that make sense for them, okay? But, if you’re just using the VA for your prescriptions, sometimes there is a way to get you coverage to help with your costs. And a lot of people choose a Medicare Advantage plan in that scenario because you can continue to use the VA for your prescriptions. You can go to the VA and get your expensive prescriptions, and the VA is great about covering prescriptions when they’re expensive. 

But sometimes, it’s cheaper to use a Medicare Advantage plan or a stand-alone prescription drug plan to get your prescriptions because the costs to you are less expensive. Sometimes, a Medicare Advantage plan makes sense because you have coverage at providers outside of the VA system. And so, what I want you to think about is that, in people in this scenario where they’re simply getting their prescription drugs from the VA, that it makes a lot of sense sometimes to also get a Medicare Advantage plan that covers them for doctors and hospitals, sometimes prescriptions, sometimes not, because there are Medicare Advantage plans that include prescription drug coverage and there are Medicare Advantage plans that exclude prescriptions at the local pharmacy. And those plans are usually really great benefit plans.

But, the number one thing to talk about is, we want to understand what kind of coverage you’re getting from the VA, and then see if there’s holes in that coverage. And if so, then we have plans that can help fill those holes, whether it be a Medicare Advantage plan or a Medicare Supplement, or a prescription drug plan. But, we want to really get our hands wrapped around, get our heads wrapped around what your coverage is from the VA and we can help guide you in that. And then, we have policies to help you to fill in those gaps.