Medicare is divided into parts that cover different things. Part A covers hospital stays, Part B covers doctors and outpatient care, Part C is Medicare Advantage (a private plan alternative), and Part D covers prescription drugs.
Original Medicare is made up of two parts. Part A covers inpatient hospital stays, skilled nursing facility care after a qualifying hospital stay, hospice, and some home health services. Most people don't pay a monthly premium for Part A because it's based on your work history. Part B covers outpatient care, meaning doctor visits, lab tests, preventive services, and medical equipment. Part B does have a monthly premium.Together, Parts A and B form the foundation. But they don't cover everything, and they come with cost-sharing, which means deductibles and coinsurance you pay out of pocket. Many people add coverage to fill those gaps.Part C, known as Medicare Advantage, is an alternative way to get your Medicare benefits. Instead of using Parts A and B directly through the federal government, you enroll in a private insurance plan that is approved by Medicare. These plans often include drug coverage and sometimes offer extras like dental or vision. The tradeoff is that they typically have networks of preferred providers.Part D is standalone prescription drug coverage. You can add it to Original Medicare, and it's often built into Medicare Advantage plans.Some people also buy a Medigap policy, which is supplemental insurance that helps cover the cost-sharing gaps in Original Medicare. Medigap works alongside Parts A and B but cannot be used with Medicare Advantage.The parts don't all have to be used together in the same way. Your combination depends on your health needs, your finances, and which doctors and medications matter most to you.
For you, this means there's no single right way to set up Medicare coverage. The goal is to build a combination that fits your specific doctors, prescriptions, and budget.
Our Commitment to Reliable Medicare Information
At Resting Sycamore Advisors, we work to provide accurate, current, and trustworthy information about Medicare Advantage, Medicare Part D, and Special Needs Plans.
To do that, we use data published by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), which is the official source for Medicare plan and enrollment information.
Our Medicare plan pages and comparison tools are powered by CMS datasets, including:
When possible, we link to the original CMS resources so you can review the source material directly.
We follow the CMS release schedule and update our website as new data becomes available.
We load new plan year Landscape and PBP files before the Medicare Annual Enrollment Period (October 15 through December 7). We also monitor CMS.gov for updates or revisions and refresh our content when needed.
We update enrollment and performance data as CMS publishes revised files, which are typically released monthly or quarterly.
We routinely monitor CMS announcements for corrections, reissued files, or other changes and update our pages accordingly.
Each plan page includes a Last Accessed date so visitors can see when the source information was most recently reviewed.
CMS data can be difficult to read in raw form. To make it easier to use, we format and organize the data for clarity.
This includes:
All data values come from CMS. We do not change the underlying values beyond formatting, organization, and presentation.
We keep internal records of the CMS dataset versions used on our site.
If CMS issues corrected or revised files, we update our website to reflect the latest available version.
Please keep the following in mind:
For personalized Medicare assistance, please use these official resources: