Medicare has four main parts: Part A covers hospital care, Part B covers doctor visits and outpatient care, Part C is Medicare Advantage (a private plan alternative), and Part D covers prescription drugs.
Medicare is divided into parts, and each one covers something different.Part A is hospital insurance. It 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 they or a spouse paid Medicare taxes during their working years.Part B is medical insurance. It covers doctor visits, outpatient procedures, preventive care, lab work, and durable medical equipment like wheelchairs. Part B has a monthly premium, and most people pay the standard amount, though higher earners pay more through a surcharge called IRMAA.Part C is Medicare Advantage. These are private insurance plans approved by Medicare that bundle Part A and Part B coverage, and usually Part D as well. They often include extras like dental, vision, and hearing. The trade-off is that you typically work within a defined network of providers.Part D is prescription drug coverage. If you're on Original Medicare (Parts A and B), you add Part D through a separate standalone plan. Medicare Advantage plans usually include drug coverage built in.Medigap, sometimes called Medicare Supplement, isn't technically a numbered part, but it's worth knowing about. These are private plans that help cover the gaps Original Medicare leaves, like copays and deductibles. You can't pair Medigap with a Medicare Advantage plan. All costs and plan details vary and should be verified annually.
For you, this means Medicare isn't one single thing, and the choices you make about how to combine these parts will shape what you pay and how you access care.
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: