A new year means new changes to popular programs for seniors. Ben Green is back with an update on the changes to Social Security and Medicare that will happen this year, and how they may affect your checks, deductibles, and coverage.
- Hello everyone and welcome into Senior Living Live, my name is Melissa. Thank you so much for joining us for this video, and to those of you joining us via podcast, thank you so much for finding us. Well today we are going to check in on the latest and greatest regarding some of the more popular benefits and programs for retirees and seniors. A new year means some new changes, some big and some small, as you will find out. Ben Green, joins us today to bring us up to speed on all of the changes that will affect you in 2022. Ben, how are you?
- Melissa, I'm doing great, how are you?
- I'm doing great and you know we flip our calendar to a new year, and a new year means new changes. And I know that some of these changes, that we're going to discuss here today will be eye-opening for a few people, who may not realize that this was coming down the pike, so let's start with number one. Tell us a little bit about yourself, your company and your background.
- Absolutely, so Ben Green, I'm President and COO of Insurance Advantage we're based in South Carolina, with offices in Nashville, we do work pretty much all across the Southeast, but we now do consultations for folks on health insurance, medicare or life insurance pretty much nation wide now. I have a BA in Finance, I do like to tell folks a little bit about my educational history, 'cause you know when we're talking about insurance the things along those lines it's really important to understand kind of where folks come from. So I have a BA in Finance, I have an MBA in International Business. I'm certified, I'm a CMFS, which means Certified Mutual Fund Specialist. And then I have dozens of certifications for health insurance, medicare, long-term care. And also getting certified additionally on social security now, so that's a little bit about me.
- Man who has put in all the work and it's paying off, I love it. And you've been quite a popular guest of ours with your webinars and with your videos, already they're so informative, it's very clear you know exactly what you're talking about, which is why we're going to you, for this updated information because, let's face it when we're looking at some of these federal or these government benefits and programs. It can be a little tough to sort of break through the minutia to understand exactly what it means to you. So we're gonna try to do that in a simplified way here today, so let's start with Social Security. What will our viewers notice differently this year about their Social Security checks?
- Well, Melissa we'll start with the good news. Okay, the good news is that there was a COLA or a Cost of Living Adjustment, up, okay. It's about 5.9% for everyone who's receiving Social Security right now, and so that is great news. The not so good news in terms of that, is that as you've seen, and as we've talked about, inflation has gone up as well. So inflation is running between six and nine or six and 10%, depending on what you buy typically speaking. If you're buying some garlic, for example inflation's up about 400%. So for folks that are relying on Social Security, the good news is that their COLA, their Cost of Living Adjustment did go up about 5.9%, but they're dealing with some inflation. The other side of that, is that there was a great deal of inflation for the Medicare Part B premium as well. And so a lot of our clients are asking, you know what's happened to their cost of living adjustment increase, and we had informed them that, unfortunately the centers for Medicare and Medicaid CMS, raised the Part B premium, from $148 and 50 cents last year, up to $170 and 10 cents this year.
- Yeah and you know, so we talk about the COLA, which it's the highest or the largest cost of living increase Social Security has seen in almost 40 years.
- Yes.
- Thank you for finally giving that to everybody, I guess,
- Thank you. but we don't get it at a time where as you said inflation, you know, kind of offsets what that would be for a lot of people. So with that Medicare Part B what does that do to the deductibles?
- Yep, so actually the deductibles for Part B is $203. And so just kind of to back up, so part eight, it typically covers 80% of your hospitalization, okay. Medicare Part B covers, 80% of your doctor's visits. All right, so the other 20% is typically your responsibility including that Part B deductible which is $203, we don't think they raise it for this year. And so the deductibles pretty much stayed around the same, the big increase was this going from $148 to $170, we had the COLA increase of 5.9%, this increase was 14%.
- Yeah.
- And so a lot of folks had all of their COLA increases taken away and more.
- Yeah, wow. Okay, so definitely breaking down the nitty-gritty there, all anybody in her most people want to care about what's covered, and then how much does it cost? How much is it going to cost me? So there you go. Now let's switch over to long-term care insurance, and we know that payouts really jumped there to the tune of almost $12.3 billion over the past couple of years. So why the increase and what does that tell you about these policies?
- Yeah, so what it tells you is that long term care insurance is more important than ever. And we have more people than ever needing to utilize longterm care insurance and long-term care facilities. And so it was really important for all of your listeners to take a look at their plans and see if they have any long-term care, if they do not, please, please, please talk to a financial advisor, talk to someone like myself that can help them walk through the long-term care options, because long-term care is becoming an increasingly important part of a retirement plan.
- Yeah, The overall package, right, so people will have Social Security, they'll have sort of that nest egg, and we're going to have another discussion a little later in another video about money strategies and how to sort of stretch out that nest egg that you've been building. But this long-term care insurance, as we were sort of discussing and if somebody's kind of been thinking about it and maybe they're thinking, oh, I'm too old for that, are they? When does it become sort of not a good idea to maybe look at longterm care insurance.
- Great question. We prefer an ideal situation for folks who start looking at it as early as 45.
- Right. Certainly at 50 or 55, it's a good chance to look at it, but we can actually get folks plans, sometimes asset-based plans where they for example have a little bit of it, they'll take some little portion of the nest egg and put it over into an asset based long-term care plan. They can do that up to age 80.
- Oh, wow.
- Yes.
- Okay, wow. Well, I did not know that, that is fantastic. And I'm sure a lot of other people don't know that either. So that's wonderful. Well, as we start to wind down here, maybe over the past year or so, as we have kind of gone in and out of this rollercoaster of COVID and you are starting to see more people retire Ben as we are increasing the numbers for longterm care insurance payouts, that the numbers are there. What are people calling you about the most as it relates to retirement?
- Yeah, so obviously a lot of folks are calling us Melissa about Medicare. They're going to retire in the next year or two, or they're even already retired, they have Medicare and they want to make sure they have the best plans. Folks are calling us about Social Security and just understanding the taxation around it and how they may be able to shift some assets legally to reduce their Social Security taxation. And then we have a lot of folks calling about long-term care of course. And then the final thing that we are now adding to our portfolio if you will, is helping folks to move money to fixed indexed annuities.
- Yeah.
- And that is because all of the market volatility, all of those stock market volatility, market's down today, it was up yet you know, up on Friday you know, whenever, whether it's up or down or sideways, if you're in retirement mode, you need to be looking at ways to kind of protect your nest egg.
- Yeah, and again, there's a separate video that we're going to have about that, so I encourage everybody to look for that on seniorlivinglive.com. So Ben final question, in this very condensed version of information, if someone has more questions and they want to reach out to you, how can they do that?
- Sure, they can call me directly at 509-3394, they call my office at 744-9665, or they can just email, email me directly at ben@theiateam.com. We're always here 24/7, and the consultations are free. We like to provide a lot of information and education for folks, so they understand what's going on.
- Perfect, yeah. Well, excellent job is always educating our viewers and sort of giving us the latest greatest and maybe not so greatest of the upcoming year for these benefit changes. Social Security, yay, Medicare, oh, not so much. Hopefully we'll maybe see a couple more changes that'll be all be on the positive side next year. Ben, thank you so much for being here.
- Thank you.
- Yeah. Well, if you enjoyed this video or this podcast with Ben, you want to check out the rest of our Senior Living Live content, and includes more topics from Ben Green, you can head on over to our website, www.seniorlivinglive.com, all of that content is available 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Thank you so much for watching and listening to Senior Living Live, have a great day everybody.