This week, I have gone over the basics of Medicare, part by part,
to give an over view of each plan. Here is what I found, in a nutshell:
Part A – Pays for services and supplies considered medically necessary to treat a disease or condition.
Part B – It covers medically necessary services or supplies that are needed to diagnose or treat your medical condition and health care to prevent illness .
Part C – Allows private health insurance companies to provide Medicare benefits.
Part D – Subsidizes the costs of prescription drugs and prescription drug insurance premiums.
For Part A, there is no monthly premium. B and D do charge monthly premiums. C is for 3rd party providers, and there will be premiums.
Once you have enrolled in a plan, you can only make changes to your coverage once a year; I am still investigating how this works, as I have been finding conflicting information. I will update as soon as I get reliable data.
If you want more in depth data, here are some very good sites: