 Personal Finance PowerPoint Presentation. Medicare eligibility age. Prepare to get financially fit by practicing personal finance. Insurance is part of our long-term risk mitigation strategy where we follow the adage of measure twice, cut once, put in a formal process in place, looking something like, set in the goals, develop a plan to reach them, put the plan in action, review the results and repeat the process periodically. Most of this information can be found at Investopedia. What is the age for the Medicare eligibility which you can find online? Take a look at the references, resources, continue your research from there. This is by Tim Parker, updated December 21st, 2021. In prior presentations, we've been taking a look at insurance in general, moving on to medical insurance, which is a little bit more complex due to the medical industry complexity and laws and regulations related to it and the insurance around it. Now we're looking at the Medicare and Medicare eligibility in conjunction with that overall insurance discussion. What is the age for Medicare eligibility? First, we basically have a disclaimer here. This is the Investopedia disclaimer. And so if you're going to any actual products from the Investopedia website or any websites, you want to have an idea of how they're affiliated or related to those companies. But Investopedia is a place you could try to do some comparisons in certain situations. And then of course, do your own research and look at the references and resources going to the sites of the actual companies to continue your research when it comes down to the decision-making process. So we recommend the best products through an independent review process. This being Investopedia and advertisers do not influence our picks. We may receive compensation if you visit partners. We recommend. Now obviously you might say, well that sounds a little bit contradictory. They're trying to say that they're not influenced by advertisers, but anytime obviously that you're getting money from advertisement or from a company that you're promoting in some way, you would think that that would have some kind of influence. So obviously you want to keep that in mind anytime that situation is involved. Doesn't mean that the sources are not good, but it does mean that you just want to know what the sources influences are as you use them in your overall research process. So read our advertisers disclosure for more information. When you think of Medicare, you probably assume that it's for people of retirement age. That's true, but the program covers more than just those who have worked all their life. So obviously there's an age of retirement that that's usually what we think about when Medicare kicks in, but there are an expansion to Medicare and other situations as well. You might be eligible right now and not know it. Well, both beneficiaries are people aged 65 or older. So there's the age that might have been in your mind that you've been thinking about. That's 65. We had to get more nuanced on it. We had to add a little bit more complexity to it, but we couldn't just say, yeah, you're right on that one here, right? So others receive their services at a younger age due to qualifying disabilities. If you qualify for Medicare and don't know where to start, eHealth Medicare, an independent insurance broker and partner of Investopedia. So once again, this is a recommendation from Investopedia. You could choose to take a look at them if you so choose, or you could just take a look at their references and resources and go from there with your own research. So they have a licensed insurance agent. So they got the telephone number who can help connect you with the Medicaid Advantage Medicare Supplement Insurance and Prescription Drug Part D plans. So who's eligible at 65? Like Social Security, Medicare is a U.S. government program funded by tax withholding from most workers paychecks. So clearly when we think about the Social Security, there's or the payroll taxes that are withheld Social Security and Medicare being two of the big payroll taxes. The other one being the federal income taxes. Generally, we think about one from the side that we're paying it and then two on the beneficiary side. So we're paying into it. If we are employees, they're withholding payroll taxes from our wages. If we're self-employed, we pay the self-employment tax. And then at the point in time that we receive the benefits for many people past 65 would be that time. Then we're getting the benefits from the government at that point in time. So when they reach 65 or meet other eligibility requirements, they receive Medicare services. You will probably receive Medicare Part A coverage free of charge because of your payroll deductions. So again, whenever they say free of charge, when the government says, yeah, it's free of charge, we've only been charging you 6.2% plus the employer paying 6.2% of your payroll, which means your actual pay was probably lower because they had to pay the payroll taxes on that for, you know, the last 40 years, whatever. But now it's, so it's not exactly free. Obviously, if you could have not paid that 6.2% and had your employer pay you more because they didn't have to pay the 6.2% and the 1.45 for the Medicare, then you probably would have got more money and you might have been able to pay for your own insurance. But in any case, now that you're paying in and you're required to at that point in time, it's free in a sense. So but Medicare has other aspects that will likely cost you. So we got the retirees and those still working. If you paid into a retirement system that didn't withdraw Social Security or Medicare premiums, you're probably still eligible for Medicare either through your retirement system or through your spouse. So you might be in a system where you didn't pay into Medicare and certain people that work for the government, for example, might not have the same requirements to pay into like the Social Security system, for example, like teachers or something, you might be exempt for whatever reason, then you may still then have access through your retirement system or through your spouse. To receive full Medicare coverage at 65, you or your spouse must have earned enough credits to be eligible for Social Security. Each $1,470 you earn annually equals one credit, but you can only earn a maximum of four credits each year. You will receive Social Security benefits at retirement if you have earned 40 credits 10 years of work, if you earned at least $5,880 in each of those years. So it could be a little bit confusing to think about how we're putting the money into the system and how that's going to be impacting the benefits that we're going to receive possibly at the retirement age in part, because we used to think about these big programs as kind of safety net programs as opposed to like benefit programs for everyone. In other words, we used to think about them as programs that basically are for people that we're not able to save for retirement for whatever reason, possibly due to in part their lifespan growing. So they might have more years in retirement that they hadn't really planned for that they're not really working for to now basically we're thinking more of these things as a benefit program like a federal kind of benefit program that that everybody should be basically participating in or get some kind of benefit from. In other words, if you're paying in this large amount of your wages, your whole working lifetime, then the question is, should you get a benefit from that even though even if you're doing well, or is it kind of a welfare program where people would be getting the benefit if they need it? It kind of seems like it's going more towards a benefit program given the fact that the amount of withholdings are quite getting high. And and so people are and people are kind of saying that they should should receive something at the point of retirement like a benefit kind of like a federal like retirement plan. So our perspective of that has kind of evolved a bit as a country in terms of what these programs are actually doing. But that means that obviously the more money that you put into the system, you would think then the more benefit you should get if you think of it as a benefit program at the point of retirement. But if you do quite well, then you would think that that's going to max out or cap at some point in time. So it's still got like a safety net welfare program kind of component to it in that the benefits might stop at some point in time, right? And then and so that still kind of benefits more people that might be on the lower income side of things. So it gets a little bit confusing and you can do a great deal of planning, especially if you're different situations where you have a self employment and say you're married, for example, who is earning the the Social Security credits and how are you going to maximize those credits and whatnot, so that you maximize the benefits at the point in time of retirement can get a little bit confusing in certain situations. But that's the general idea. So if you continue to work beyond age 65, things get a bit more complicated. You will have to file for Medicare, but you may be eligible to keep your company's health insurance policy as your primary insurer. So in other words, if you're still working, the idea here it used to be, and this is another kind of confusion with this whole system, because when you put in a system that sets an age limit like a cap at 65, things change over time. People used to die around 65 or 70, right? Now people are living way past that regularly. So it's quite likely that you might still want to be working after 65 and you're not, you know, retired at that point in time, which kind of messes up the calculation for the for these benefit programs, which assume that you're like close to death at that time, because in the 1930s, the average person didn't, you know, wasn't going that far in any case. But so if you continue to work beyond age 65, things get a bit more complicated. You will have to file for Medicare, but you may be able to keep your company's health insurance policy as your primary insurer, or your company sponsored insurance plan might force you to make Medicare primary or other conditions may apply to you. There's a lot to consider. That's for sure that makes it prudent to talk to a person knowledgeable in Medicare about your specific choices. So clearly you would like to talk to someone once again, independent. You want to be thinking about people's relationships too. If they're advising you to do something, do they have a financial interest in what they're advising you to do. And it would be nice if you could talk to someone that's independent, possibly a friend, a lawyer, someone in the healthcare community possibly, and maybe even pay that person a salary just to get advice, which is not contingent on any decision you're making, just advice and then go make your decision. This would be your human resources department or a Medicare representative. Human resources can be nice to give you your options, but notice human resources usually will not give you much advice because they don't want to get sued. So they don't want to give you any individual advice about your actual health decisions or your tax decision or your retirement planning decision, because that's outside the realm oftentimes of just doing the human resources for the company, which is really geared to not getting sued. So the Medicare representative could be a good place to go. Spouses, maybe you were a stay-at-home parent or spouse and you have no work history. Now, obviously you do have work history if you're a stay-at-home parent, but you don't have the kind of work history that could be tracked for social security with the money coming directly out of the paycheck with your social security number going to the social security to the government. So you can still receive Medicare benefits at age 65 based on your spouse's work record. So if your spouse has the required 40 credits and you've been married for at least one continuous year, you qualify for benefits. People in same-sex marriages have the identical rights as any other married couple to be covered under their spouse's Medicare benefits. If you're divorced and don't qualify for Medicare under your own work record, you may qualify based on your ex-spouse's record as long as your marriage lasted at least 10 years and you are currently single. Disability benefits, you may be eligible for both full benefits before the age of 65 if you have a qualifying disability. So here's where kind of the deviation comes in with just that age requirement. How to qualify. So to receive Medicare disability benefits, you must first receive Social Security Disability Insurance. That's the SSDI benefits for 24 months. There is usually a five-month waiting period after a worker or widow, widower is labeled as disabled before they can receive SSDI benefits. During this waiting period, the individual may be eligible for coverage under an employer's health plan or if they're no longer employed through COBRA, C-O-B-R-A, if a person has an end-stage renal disease, that's the ESRD or Amatrophic Lateral Sclerosis, I'll just call it sclerosis, ALS, even easier just call it that, which is more commonly known as Lou Gehrig's disease. That's even easier. I knew Lou Gehrig's, not personally, but I know that guy. So there's no 24-month waiting period for benefits then. A person diagnosed with ESRD can generally begin receiving benefits three months after a course of regular dialysis or after kidney transplant. Meanwhile, as soon as a person diagnosed with ALS begins collecting Social Security Disability benefits, they are enrolled in Part A and Part B of the Medicare benefits at that point. So what if you still work? So what if you're still working? I don't want to stop working. I can't at this point in time. I tried, but then this whole COVID thing happened and I got to go back to work now, I guess. So you can work and receive Medicare disability benefits for a transition period under Social Security Work incentives and ticket to work programs. There are three timeframes to understand. The first, the trial work period is a nine-month period during which you can test your ability to work and still receive full benefits. The nine months don't have to be consecutive. The trial period continues until you have worked for nine months within a 60-month period. Once those nine months are used up, you move into the next timeframe, the extended period of eligibility. For the next 36 months, you can still receive benefits in any month you aren't earning substantial gainful activity. So now we've got this term, substantial gainful activity, meaning how much gainful like revenue, how much money are you earning, for example. Finally, you can still receive free Medicare Part A benefits and pay the premium for Part B for at least 93 months after the nine-month trial period if you're still qualified as disabled. If you want to continue receiving Part B benefits, you have to request them in writing. If you're disabled, you may incur extra expenses that those without disabilities do not. Expenses such as paid transportation to work, mental health counseling, prescription drugs, and other qualified expenses might be deducted from your monthly income before the determination of benefits, which may allow you to earn more and still qualify for benefits. So what's the bottom line with all this stuff? That's the horizontal mark that we put underneath. That's what the bottom line is. Any case, to see if you qualify for benefits, go to the Medicare.gov's eligibility and premium calculator. There's a link to that here, or you can just check it out Medicare.gov, Medicare.gov, V for victory over Medicare questions. So that's where you can check your eligibility for benefits and get an estimate of your monthly premium. If your situation is not be covered in the calculator, contact Social Security to discuss your case and get the assistance you need. Social Security representatives will help you understand your particular situation and guide you through the next steps. That's the bottom line.