Original Medicare is the federal health insurance program made up of Part A (hospital coverage) and Part B (medical coverage). It covers many health care services but does not cover everything, and it does not cap what you can owe out of pocket in a year.
Original Medicare is run by the federal government and has two parts. Part A covers inpatient hospital stays, skilled nursing facility care, hospice, and some home health services. Most people do not pay a monthly premium for Part A if they or their spouse worked and paid Medicare taxes for at least 10 years. Part B covers doctor visits, outpatient care, preventive services, and medical equipment like wheelchairs or oxygen. Part B does have a monthly premium, and that amount can vary based on your income.Here is the important thing people often miss: Original Medicare pays its share, and you are responsible for the rest. There are deductibles, copays, and coinsurance (meaning you pay a percentage of costs) with no yearly limit on what you could owe. That is why most people pair Original Medicare with either a Medigap supplement plan or a Medicare Advantage plan to help cover those gaps. Original Medicare also does not include prescription drug coverage, so many people add a separate Part D drug plan.
For you, this means Original Medicare is your foundation, but it rarely works alone. Understanding what it covers and what it leaves open helps you choose the right add-on coverage for your situation.
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: