Optional Coverage
Some things sit outside a medical plan, and outside Original Medicare entirely. This is a short path through the two that come up most: dental and vision, and medical care abroad.
Two gaps worth closing
Most people arrange a medical plan and stop there. Two things sit outside almost every medical plan, and both of them are easy to close once you know they are open.
The first is routine dental and vision care. Original Medicare, meaning Part A and Part B, does not cover routine dental or routine vision care at all. Some Medicare Advantage plans include a limited benefit, and what they include varies a great deal from plan to plan.
The second is medical care outside the United States. Medicare does not pay for medical services you receive abroad, apart from a few narrow exceptions. Coverage under an individual or employer plan varies and has to be checked plan by plan.
Where this path goes
Two pages, in order. Each one ends with a link to the next.
Dental and Vision Insurance
How dental and vision plans are built, why you check the network before you check the price, and how to look your own dentist up before you compare a single premium.
Learn MoreTravel Insurance
What your coverage actually does once you leave the country, when the benefit you already have is enough, and what to check on any travel medical policy.
Learn MoreWhat we would check first
These are the questions that decide what you actually need. None of them takes long to answer.
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Whether your dentist is in the network of the plan you are looking at. This decides which plans are even worth pricing.
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What your Medicare Advantage plan already includes, if you have one, so you do not buy a standalone plan that overlaps it.
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Whether your Medicare supplement includes the foreign travel emergency benefit. Plans F, G and N do.
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Where you are going and for how long, because a short trip to a country with modern hospitals is a different question from a long trip somewhere remote.
The two facts people get wrong
Routine dental and vision care is not covered by Original Medicare. Not cleanings, not fillings, not dentures, not eyeglasses, and not the exam that measures you for them. Medicare Advantage plans vary, so read yours rather than assume it.
Medicare does not pay outside the United States. Medicare supplement plans F, G and N include a foreign travel emergency benefit that pays 80 percent of emergency care beginning in the first 60 days of a trip, after a yearly deductible, up to a lifetime maximum. That is a real benefit and it is also a capped one.
There is never a charge for our services
We are paid by the insurance companies, not by you. Tell us who your dentist is, or where you are going and when, and we will do the checking with you.
If the answer is that you already have what you need, that is what we will tell you.
Not sure which of these you need?
Tell us what you already have. We will tell you which of these gaps is actually open for you and which is not.