Richard Chan

Thanks, Robert.

Thanks for having me.

Excited to be here.

Yeah, no problem.

So Medicare is the federal health insurance program for people who are over the age of 65 in the US.

And so for most people, it is a mandatory transition that has to happen at some point in their life, either at 65 or if they're working past 65 when they retire.

Yeah, that's right.

There's a lot of things that people aren't aware of.

There's something called late enrollment penalties.

And so generally, if you miss your window to sign up and you don't have any other sort of coverage, there are penalties up to 10% of your premium for every single year.

You could have had Medicare, but you didn't.

And they are lifelong.

So once you sign up, they last forever.

Yeah.

So, Medicare as a program generally will cover what they consider, in quotes, medically necessary services.

So, that would be things like going to the doctor, if you get into an accident, going to the hospital.

But it won't cover things like routine dental, routine vision, at least not in the basic program.

That's not what the Medicare program was designed for.

When you think about Medicaid, it's really for critical services or necessary services.

And there are now some really private plans that I think you were inferring earlier that do cover some of these routine dental and routine vision and other services that maybe the traditional program doesn't cover.