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"Baseball is like church. Many attend, few understand."—Leo Durocher (US baseball manager, 1906-1991)

There are four questions that need to be answered in order to obtain the financial peace we desire as it relates to the daunting cost of health care in retirement.

1 Who provides health insurance coverage for this stage of life?

2 How does the coverage work?

3 How much will health expenditures cost?

4 How do I best financially prepare?

I address the first two questions in this chapter. The place to begin, therefore, in planning for health care in retirement is to gain a basic understanding of Medicare. Many are enrolled in Medicare but few understand it well. As it stands today, Medicare will be the method of insurance for most Americans during retirement. It is the federal health insurance program for people who are 65 or older. Some individuals will have employer provided insurance to supplement their Medicare, others (veterans, for example) may have Medicare supplemented by insurance provided by groups like TriCare. Whether you have ancillary coverage or not, Medicare will be a meaningful part of your future. I will provide an overview of the alphabet soup that comprises Medicare, as well as an explanation of how the pieces are put together to form the two most common coverage plans. Summaries are provided throughout the chapters, highlighting the most important information tied to your investment planning. The purpose is not to describe the minutia, eligibility and coverage (one source of that detail is Medicare.gov), but to become reasonably fluent with the various parts in order to understand the impact on your financial plan.

We will begin our overview of Medicare with a description of the most common coverage plan: Original Medicare (Parts A & B) with a Medigap policy and prescription drug policy (Part D).