Medicare insurance comes in several parts with varying degrees of services covered. The four major parts are:
- Medicare Hospital Insurance (Part A) covers hospital stays (semiprivate rooms), tests performed in the hospital, food and doctor’s fees.
- Medicare Medical Insurance (Part B) covers some services not covered by Part A, usually on an outpatient basis, including:
- Ambulance transportation
- Blood transfusions
- Chemotherapy
- Common x-rays
- Drugs administered during an office visit
- Hormone treatments
- Immunosuppressive drugs (for recent organ transplant patients)
- Lab tests
- Outpatient treatments
- Renal dialysis
- Surgeries
- Vaccines for pneumonia and flu
- Medicare Advantage (Part C) replaces the original Medicare plans (Parts A and B), with private health insurance. Since 2003, these plans have been supplemented with prescription plan coverage and are now called Medicare Advantage.
- Medicare Prescription Drugs (Part D) is prescription drug coverage for Medicare beneficiaries who choose to enroll in either a standalone drug plan or Medicare Advantage (Part C) with prescription drug coverage.
Medicare insurance comes in several parts with varying degrees of services covered. The four major parts are:
- Long-term care. Medicare only pays for medically “necessary” care provided by a medical professional in a nursing home or during skilled home health care.
- Custodial care (or activities of daily living): walking, getting in and out of bed, dressing, bathing, toileting, shopping, eating, and taking medicine
- More than 100 days of skilled nursing home care during a benefit period following a hospital stay.
- Homemaker services
- Private-duty nursing
- Dental care and dentures
- Health care received while traveling outside the United States
- Cosmetic surgery
- Routine foot care
- Routine eye care, eyeglasses (except after cataract surgery)
- Hearing aids
