A Medigap policy is a private Health Insurance designed to supplement Medicare. It is sometimes called a "Medicare Supplement Policy". This means that costs not covered by Medicare, like copayments, coinsurance, and deductibles are paid for by the Medigap policy.
It may also cover things that Medicare doesn't cover. eg. If you have Medicare, and the amount that a Doctor or other Health Care provider is legally permitted to charge is higher than the Medicare-approved amount, the difference (excess charge), is covered by a Medigap policy.
Every Medigap policy must follow Federal and state laws designed to protect you, and it must be clearly identified as "Medicare Supplement Insurance" .
These plans and standardized and identified by letters A through J and each one must offer the same basic benefits, no matter which insurance company sells it.
Plans H, I and J originally had limited prescription drug coverage. It should be noted that no new Medicare supplement policies covering drugs could be sold after January 1, 2006. If you already have a Medicare supplement policy that covers drugs, the policy may be kept but you cannot also have Medicare Part D.
Since most supplemental policies do not have drug coverage that is as good as Medicare, you would have to pay a penalty if you wanted to switch to Medicare Part D. Another choice would be to keep the supplemental policy and drop the drug coverage or switch to a different supplemental policy that does not cover drugs.
The premium for the Medicare supplemental policy would be reduced due to dropping the drug coverage.Usually the only difference between Medigap policies sold by different insurance companies is cost.
You can expect the companies that do a lot of advertising will charge more for these policies.
