Three friends at the same diner booth in Dayton, Ohio. All three turn 65 in January, all three get the exact same health for the next twenty years, and each one picks a different Medigap plan: Plan G, Plan N, or the High-Deductible Plan G. We follow every premium, deductible and copay, year by year, through a knee replacement, a hospital stay, cataract surgery and heart failure, to see who really paid less by 85.
Then we stress-test it: slower and faster premium increases, a bad health year every year, and a healthy twenty years. Plus the rule that keeps most people from switching Medigap plans later, and the 15 states where you can.
How we calculated: a year-by-year model built for this video.
– Starting premiums at 65: the average of 16,954 Medicare.gov quotes for the 2026 plan year (MoneyGeek): Plan G $220, Plan N $171 and High-Deductible G $61 a month.
– Premiums rise 7.6% a year: 2.5% for age (attained-age pricing) and 5% for medical costs.
– Part B deductible: $292 in 2027 (Trustees projection), rising 5% a year.
– High-deductible Plan G deductible: $3,050 in 2027 (CMS), rising 3% a year.
– Plan N copays: $20 per office visit and $50 per ER visit.
– Doctor visits: 5 a year to 74 and 6 from 75 (CDC averages), and 10 from 80.
– A normal year: $4,000 in Part B services, rising 6% a year.
– Bad years hit the high deductible in full: a knee replacement at 69, pneumonia at 74, cataracts at 77, and heart failure from 80 to 84.
– The Part B premium is the same for all three and is left out.
Lou, Bonnie and Cliff are illustrative. Your state, age and insurance company will give you different prices.
Chapters:
0:00 Three friends, three Medigap plans
1:15 What these three plans cover
2:31 Why not Plan F?
2:42 The prices at 65
3:26 How we keep score
4:40 Year 1
5:32 Year 5: the knee replacement
6:04 Scoreboard at 70
6:18 Year 7: the icy parking lot
6:48 Year 10: pneumonia
7:13 Cliff’s worst year vs. Lou’s
7:24 Scoreboard at 75
7:37 Year 13: cataracts
7:48 Year 16: heart failure
8:31 Scoreboard at 80
8:54 Who paid less by 85?
9:24 Why Plan G cost the most
9:47 The cash Cliff needed
10:06 Stress tests
11:15 Age 78: the switch Lou couldn’t make
12:05 The birthday rule states
12:24 So who really won?
12:57 What I’d do
13:22 About the numbers
Sources:
– MoneyGeek, Medicare Supplement Cost (2026 Plan Year):
– CMS, CY 2027 Medigap high-deductible options:
– KFF Health News, Medigap Premiums Leap (April 2026):
– CSG Actuarial, Plan G average premiums (Feb 2026):
– CDC/NCHS, Health, United States, healthcare visits:
– KFF, How Medicare pays physicians:
– WTOP, Medigap birthday rule states (July 2026):
– AARP, Part B 2027 projection:
This video is for education and general information, not financial, tax, insurance or legal advice. Talk to a licensed, independent advisor before you choose a plan. Researched with AI tools, reviewed and edited by a human before publishing. Frank is an animated narrator with an AI-generated voice.
#medicare #medigap #retireemath
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Plan g lou
Hum?! I turn 65 next year and I'm gathering information on Medigap plans so this is rather timely. I'm leaning toward Plan G, although I had a recent surgery.
I was focused on recovering and simply paid the bills I was sent. After about 8 weeks I felt better and I started going through the bills I had been paying and it turns out the surgery center was over charging me, they were charging me even though I had a positive balance on my account. I looked for a patient advocate to help me sort things out but ended up going through my insurance Explanation of Benefits paperwork and building a spreadsheet to double check the math that the surgery center wasn't showing me. I did end up getting a refund from the surgery center. How would I have been treated if I was on Medicare? How would I have been treated if I was on one of these plans illustrated here? What if I move to a different state? What if I move to a different country? I realize I have no Medicare outside the USA but do these Medigap plans have out of country coverage?
I can offer my own experience on why I rejected an Advantage plan and chose traditional Medigap. A friend's relative had been experiencing some falls at home (nothing serious, no injuries). He was about eighty years old, and figured he was just "getting up there". One evening he fell and couldn't get up, and was taken to the ER, where they diagnosed a brain tumor. The operation to remove it was successful, and he was admitted to a skilled care facility for rehab. Within a single week, his Advantage Plan wrote a letter to the facility demanding a progress report and justification that he needed to be in there, which made me go "Hmmm".
My second experience was with a friend who was diagnosed with cancer of the small bowel. He had gone to the ER due to pain and vomiting, and scans didn't reveal anything, and they planned to send him home. My friend protested, and the doctors told him the next step was exploratory surgery, which he agreed to, and this is how they found and removed his cancerous bowel. He recovered from the surgery and did a round of chemo. After, he found that his Advantage Plan would not pay for periodic PET scans (nuclear medicine, where they inject a radioactive isotope into your bloodstream, it detects cancer because the metabolic rate of cancer is much higher, and it "eats" more of the isotope than the non-cancerous tissue around it, and it shows itself plainly on an MRI. This is why the traditional scans in the ER did not show the cancer, a PET scan is the gold standard). Anyway, he only received regular CAT or MRI's, which did not show signs of the cancer returning. About 18 months later, he developed the same symptoms and went back to the ER, where exploratory surgery found that his entire abdomen was full of cancer, and could not be removed via surgery. He gave up hope at that point, and died about six months later. There's no doubt in my mind that had he been given PET scans, the cancer would have been detected much earlier and they could have restarted chemo, possibly saving or at least extending his life. Hence my opinion is "to Hell with Advantage Plans", my experience is that they are anything but. Are they cheaper? Sure, as long as you stay healthy, but God Help You if you get really sick.
Edit: For those unaware, all three of the plans in this video are different versions of Medigap plans, the video didn't include Advantage Plans, which surprised me a bit, it would have been interesting to include that option here.
It would be interesting to see a comparison for someone who develops a chronic disease earlier in the retirement, such as a recurrent cancer that requires ongoing treatment for many years or a cardiac surgery
Of course, the patient with the advantage plan may be limited as to which doctor they can see.