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FEFP: Medicare in 2026 Part 2: No One Size Fits All for Federal Retirees (EP112)

FEFP: Medicare in 2026 Part 2: No One Size Fits All for Federal Retirees (EP112)

Are you choosing your Medicare plan based purely on math or on what truly fits your life? In Part 2 of our Medicare 2026 series, Bryan Gay, owner of Boomer Insurance and seasoned Medicare expert, returns to expand your understanding of the options available, especially if you’re a federal employee or enrolled in TRICARE for Life. You’ll learn why Medicare decisions aren’t just about premiums and deductibles, why there’s no one-size-fits-all solution, and how to evaluate whether switching plans actually makes sense for your situation.

This episode is a “license to shop, not a license to drop.” Bryan walks through when you should consider changing plans and when staying put may be the smarter move. We discuss updates affecting TRICARE for Life, key considerations for federal employees, and why individualized advice is essential before making a change.

Listen to the full episode here:

https://youtu.be/9dR9uIqGcm0

What you will learn:

  • When you may choose to do FEHB over just Medicare. (3:15)
  • Why math isn’t the only thing to look at. (6:00)
  • Things to consider as a federal employee thinking about Medicare. (13:30)
  • The importance of having individualized advice. (20:30)
  • Why you need to be aware of your options. (23:00)
  • When you should be switching your plans. (30:15)
  • The importance of understanding the pros and cons of your financial decisions. (35:00)
  • Updates on TRICARE for Life. (38:00)

Ideas Worth Sharing:

  • “There is no one-size-fits-all with Medicare and FEHB.” – Bryan Gay
  • “If someone has TRICARE for Life, that’s almost impossible to beat.” – Mason & Associates
  • “Math is important, but ultimately, the best plan forward is the plan that you love and embrace.” – Mason & Associates

Resources from this episode:

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Read the Transcript Below:

Congratulations for taking ownership of your financial plan by tuning into the Federal Employee Financial Planning Podcast, hosted by Mason & Associates, financial advisors with over three decades of experience serving you.

Tommy Blackburn: Before we jump into today’s episode, John and I wanted to take a moment to share a little bit more of our perspective that of a financial planner, those who specialize with federal employees and retirees, and with particular tax focus and our thoughts on what’s probably more than just math and our consideration.

So today’s episode we’re gonna have Bryan Gay. He’s a Medicare expert. We really treasure our relationship with him, thank the world of him, and there’s some great information into today’s episode, but we thought it’d be helpful just to share our perspective a little bit before we go into the episode ’cause we think it’s unique and hopefully helpful to you, our audience.

John, thank you for joining me in this preamble to the episode.

John Mason: Oh, my pleasure. And thank you and Bryan for recording two great episodes. We’ve had him many times on the podcast, so it’s really cool to just continue to have him back, continue to have him as a resource. And it was even cooler that I got to take a break from an episode or two. So thank you.

Tommy Blackburn: You are welcome. And I was thinking about you. It’s nice to get a break every once in a while, but we’re certainly happy to have you back on this episode, at least the beginning of it, and looking forward to having this conversation with you.

John Mason: As I kinda listened to that episode, Tommy, preparing, ’cause I knew we were gonna do a preamble here. I thought Bryan hit a lot of great stuff, specifically, he was talking about three options, which I think is often overlooked. I loved how he talked about the FEHB only option. I thought that was a really good thing to have out there because most people just assume that we have to enroll in Medicare Part B.

We’re always gonna take Medicare Part A 99.9% of the time because we have premium-free Part A, because we’ve been paying for that our whole career. But we have clients every year who decide not to enroll in Medicare because they’re very high earners. They have IRMAA adjustments and they just go on that Blue Cross Blue Shield basic only, or that FEHB plan only, for example.

So I thought that was good. I loved the option two, which was the Medicare and FEHB, and then number three was, that one’s maybe a little bit more controversial, which is like, do we just abandon all of federal employee health benefits in favor of either private Medigap policies or Medicare supplement policies paired with a Part D drug plan?

Or do we go even like even more intense and we go to something like a Medicare Advantage plan? So I liked hearing those three options. I thought you guys did a good job talking about them.

Tommy Blackburn: Well, thank you for laying those out, which our audience, you’ll hear as you get into the episode. But yeah, those are the three options that were talked about and it’s really good to hit on all of them.

I think one of the things I know I wanna talk about before the audience gets into that episode is really the option being laid out of leave FEHB and go on Medicare and just Medicare. I think it’s great what you said and what’s mentioned in the episode. We do have an option to just do FEHB, but on the opposite end of the scale, we could do just Medicare and it’s important to, and I’m sure we will go down the two routes there, ’cause actually one of them, we can come back to FEHB and that’s Medicare Advantage, where we could suspend FEHB.

The other is doing just traditional Medicare with a supplement and that one, I think, for both of us and our firm in general, is a course that shouldn’t be taken lightly, just because, and I think all of our clients and the audience would agree as well, you’ve worked a career for that FEHB benefit. You’ve known it, you’ve trusted you like it. Leaving that and not being able to come back, that just feels like that’s a very serious decision that shouldn’t be made lightly.

So certainly, we should be aware of our options, and that’s one of them. We should perhaps even consider it, but we don’t want to take lightly that we’re closing the door on other options if we do that.

John Mason: Well, I think to clarify, Tommy, our role versus Bryan’s role, which is very important, is Bryan is, in our opinion, a world-class expert on Medicare supplement, Medicare Advantage plans. And he is really, really good at helping you pick the plan that you need, how it’s gonna fit your family, talk you through the options. He probably understands things like which plans are going to give you a Medicare Part B rebate on your social security benefit verification letter.

Things that we just don’t know ’cause that’s not the world we live in every day. Us as the financial planner, we sit in a little bit of a different perspective ’cause we’re zooming out and looking at the entire picture, not just specifically insurance. So for us, and I’ve been doing this now 16 years, and you similar.

At the end of the day, I don’t really have the conversation about people leaving federal employee health benefits because I know that it’s probably going to fall on deaf ears nine times. It’s not gonna be something that we’re excited about. I mean, we’ve talked about the TRICARE for Life and the Medicare Advantage plan to numerous clients, and I think maybe we have one client out of 400 plus that have enrolled in a Medicare Advantage plan paired with their TRICARE for Life.

So one out of 400’s not a lot. So at some point. We have to make a decision as business owners too, as well as advisors. What advice are our clients going to take and what advice is probably not something that they’re going to move on? Now we always try to educate clients on what’s available to them, but we’re also not going to push them out of their comfort zone.

It makes me think about Mike Mason, probably three years ago. He was at his previous house. He was enrolled in Cox Cable and Cox Internet. And I looked at the bill and it was like four or $500 a month or something. And this was back when YouTube TV was like $55, hadn’t jacked up prices yet. I’m like, “What are you doing, man?”

He was like, “You know, after 35 years of doing this financial planning business and reaching financial independence, I’ve earned the right to waste money on Cox Cable if that’s what I want to do. It’s convenient, it’s easy. I know how the buttons work.” And that was a decision that he made to continue paying that bill ’cause he was comfortable with it.

It didn’t hurt his financial plan. Maybe it’s not something that you and I would do. Maybe there’s something that’s more ideal and I’ll put that in air quotes, “more ideal,” but sometimes math isn’t the overriding decision. So I love math and I love the data and I love the analysis and certainly we have to share with clients what’s possible, but then we also have to come back.

Why does Dave Ramsey? Why is he so popular? He’s popular ’cause he helps people get outta debt quickly. He’s popular of the debt snowball. But we know the debt snowball is not the most mathematically efficient way to pay down your debt, but emotionally, it’s successful. Paying off your house even at a 3% interest rate, maybe is not mathematically advisable, but it’s emotionally advisable in some instances.

So I guess I just wanna say from a financial planning perspective. Audience, we hear you. Clients, we hear you. Yes, math is important, but ultimately the best plan forward is the plan that you love and embrace, even if it’s not the best math plan.

Tommy Blackburn: So I would say the one, it actually is all math. But maybe you can’t measure everything in a premium equation or just the dollar and cents, right?

There’s other variables to that math and a lot of times it’s not just dollars. And I think that’s what we’re getting at. We’re weighing those variables, those things that are hard to quantify and bringing it back to the quantifying it as well. And we’ve talked about this for financial planning with clients where we may feel certain ways or think that, “Hey, option A is your best option, but option B, C, and D work. And as your advisor, I can see that none of these options are gonna blow your plan up. And as long as we have educated conversation around it, I’m okay.” Like you said, the whole mortgage pay down.

I’ve recently helped a client do this, where they had like a 3% rate and they said, “Hey Tommy, I know. You’ve said you’re better off investing your money. It is basically free money, flexibility, et cetera, and everything you’re saying, I agree with, Tommy. I get it, but I really just want that mortgage paid off.”

And it’s like, okay, we’ve had the conversation, let’s put a plan in place now, completely on board with helping you. So I think it all just goes hand in hand. Completely agree, John. There’s just, there’s many things that we’re trying to weigh here for a client and a lot of them, you just can’t put in dollar terms,

John Mason: Well, we say it all the time, Tommy, when we talk about federal employees’ group life.

So audience, this episode that you’re about to listen to is intended to broaden your horizons to share what’s available to you, maybe get you outta your comfort zone a little bit. And like we love to say with federal employees group life, it’s a license to shop. It’s not a license to drop. So don’t take this episode as financial planning, tax planning, or any other advice, but let it open up your eyes to what’s possible.

Maybe get out of your comfort zone a bit and do some shopping during the next open season. So again, license to shop and become educated, not a license to drop. And then certainly we wanna understand, and you can hear other episodes where we talk about the difference between suspending federal employee health benefits versus dropping federal employee health benefits.

The two are materially different and we don’t wanna link or ever use them like they’re the same things when they’re completely, absolutely different things. So it’s a license to shop, not drop. Enjoy the episode, Tommy. I think the audience is really gonna love to hear broadening their horizons, what’s available, some of these new things that are available in Medicare Advantage plans, both private Medicare Advantage as well as FEHB Medicare Advantage.

And audience, we want you to know as you’re diving into the content of this episode, that we’re frustrated too. At the end of the day, we hate to see our clients paying almost $700 a month for federal employees’ group life–I’m sorry, FEHB, Blue Cross Blue Shield basic. We hate to see that $700 a month. Then you have your Medicare, then you have an IRMAA. We hate that for you too. We’ve seen these increases rise over the last few years, so we’re going back to the drawing board as well. And our commitment to you is we’re gonna become better experts, not the expert, but we’re gonna become more educated on Medicare Advantage plans.

We’re gonna become more educated on the FEHB Medicare Advantage plans. We need to understand things, Tommy, like if we go to a G.E.H.A. advantage, what’s the disadvantage of that plan over Blue Cross Blue Shield Basic? We’re gonna try to unpack that. Health insurance, Tommy, is such an important personal decision.

It’s really hard for the advisor to be the authority, but we’re gonna continue to get more educated, be able to provide our audience and our clients with more resources. But ultimately, audience, you may not wanna hear this. It’s on you. It’s on you, baby. You’ve gotta do your research. You’ve gotta make this work for you and your family.

That’s not something an advisor, in our opinion, can really guide you because we’re never gonna know you from a health perspective as good as you know yourself.

Tommy Blackburn: I love it. And you even just said it. Our job is to be the guide. So we’re here to guide and assist you, but ultimately it’s your decision. You know you better than anybody else and what’s gonna work best for you.

We mentioned, John, previously, I know we’re gonna try to let this go into the episode from here, but we listened to someone that talked about small health deposits and it was like the best workout plan is the one that works for you, right? So yeah, we can lay out, here’s the best one known to man, but you’re never gonna do it ’cause you hate it. That’s not the right plan for you. We’ve gotta choose the one that works for you.

I hope you enjoy the episode.

John Mason: Yes, Tommy. Thank you for this preamble to the episode. Audience, remember, Bryan’s a trusted resource. Our job as a financial planning team is to not always know all the answers, but to know a lot of the answers and then bring in the experts to provide additional content. That’s what we’re doing today. Enjoy the episode with Bryan Gay and Tommy Blackburn.

Tommy Blackburn: Welcome back to the Federal Employee Financial Planning Podcast. Again, I’m Tommy Blackburn, and today, we’ve got Bryan Gay back with us on part two here. We wanted to talk a little bit more specifically about our federal employees and maybe some things to keep in mind specifically. Again, we’ve covered this in previous episodes, so go back and listen to those.

I think it was 46, 47, 48, and 87. Probably some great information out there. We did want to, again, quickly touch on it, and I think specifically, maybe as we approach Medicare as a federal employee retiree, things we should be thinking about. And with that, Bryan, I’d love to kick it over to you.

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Bryan Gay: Perfect. Right. Thanks, Tommy. I know we talked offline just a real quick and this will be, hopefully, a real quick educational thing. They’ll be kind of like drinking out of a fire hose, I think.

But, you know, we were talking about what I’ve noticed in the last six months or so, and now that it’s January of 2026, we just got through doing the annual enrollment period with Medicare, right? Well, we’re starting to see more and more of these federal retirees who are starting to feel a little bit of the crunch on just overall inflation, just the price of goods and services, but also the price of these federal blue health insurance rates going up fairly significantly over the time.

And as you and I were talking it, it’s better to know what somebody’s options are early than find out it’s a little too little too late and they’re not even available to those people later. You know what I mean? So it’s almost getting to the point where it’s dire that they really look at what their options are as a federal retiree when they’re approaching the age of 65. And I cannot stress it enough, there is no one-size-fits-all. Absolutely not. We’ve talked to people who are single. They retired from the federal government, they’re turning 65. Well, that’s a lot easier.

That’s a lot cleaner of, “Hey, here’s your individual option number one, option number two, option number three. Which one do you feel is right for you? Do you feel like just keeping Federal Blue Cross by itself with no Medicare, ’cause you can do it? Do you think that’s the right way to go? Do you think, as an individual, you want to have the Federal Blue Cross Plan and Medicare together? That’s a wonderful package. That’s a fantastic package. Or do you wanna do option three, which is the dreaded, unbelievable, never think about it, leaving FEHB, leaving the office of Personal management and going outside to get Medicare and a Medicare type plan. And I would say a lot of people don’t do that just because it’s scary, but they don’t realize some of these Medicare plans are guaranteed for life.”

Like, once you get that type of plan, you get to keep that kind of plan for the rest of your life and the benefits never change. So it’s kind of stable looking at that option too. So that’s, as an individual, well, that’s a lot cleaner, but then when you start having husbands and wives or spouses coming in, what should we do?

Well, if they’re both born on the same day at the same hospital, yeah, that’s probably easy, Tommy. Turns out I am 45 days older than my wife. I always try to make sure she knows to respect her elders. But at the end of the day, if I was the federal retiree, my wife is 45 days younger.

If I left the plan, it’s kicking her off my insurance, our insurance. I’ll tell you what would make my life a living you know what is to drop my wife’s health insurance right before retirement. She would never let me live that down.

Tommy Blackburn: Yeah. You try playing, respect your older card under that scenario

Bryan Gay: Yeah, it is not gonna work, but then there’s people who might have a younger spouse who’s two or three or four or five years younger. I mean, I just talked to a couple, she’s 20 years younger, so, and then there’s people who have older spouses, and the older spouse was not the federal retiree, it was the younger spouse who was the federal retiree.

That adds a whole nother complication. You got people who have kids still. Maybe they have adult kids that are finishing up college. Well, that goes into the play of the ideas. And then you’ve got people who have adopted their grandkids and they have full custody of their grandkids. Well, those grandkids are also still on FEHB health insurance.

Tommy Blackburn: Right. And we don’t wanna lose that.

Bryan Gay: It’s all complicated. This is not a one-size-fits-all, but here’s where

Tommy Blackburn: What great–

Bryan Gay: What’d you say?

Tommy Blackburn: I was just gonna say what great stuff we’re beating around the bush here. There’s absolutely no way we can cover all of these scenarios in the time we have allotted, but I do love, my gears are certainly turning.

One of the things Bryan and I were talking about coming in is just flexibility and the unknowns of what life is gonna deal to you. So we may, that’s why we like to be educated as we’re making these decisions and also try to think through with hopefully good guidance of maybe what are the things I’m not thinking about.

In a lot of these, as we’ve been talking, Bryan, or as you’ve been kind of going through, hey, it’s not all one size fits all, is when we have that spouse and we need to be thoughtful about what we could do to them. And not only if we pass like their health insurance, which is gonna be wrapped up in all this, but as I’m thinking, it’s like what happens to their income situation, which I know you’re thinking too, like when did we protect it?

Hopefully, we did. And then if we did, well, now we’re in single brackets, all single, you know, Medicare surcharges. So there’s just a lot to think through here. I just love it and I don’t know how much we’ll get into, I know you had a track you were running down. I hope you remember it. I’ll try to turn it back over to you.

Just wanted to share, I’m really enjoying it and wanted to dovetail to folks. This is the value of advice is really just thinking through these things and both of us, I believe, are big proponents of, “Let’s not just shut the door, as you said, preemptively. Let’s at least look through these doors and figure out what option we’re most comfortable with.”

I’m a big fan of flexibility, leaving ourselves options, but it’s ultimately up to you, client, our audience, to make these decisions. And like maybe a good disclosure here too, that this is education and we hope it was good education, but the advice needs to be customized to you individually.

Bryan Gay: Absolutely. And I’ll say there’s not a lot of financial planners like you guys who truly do specialize in that federal retiree side of things. So for you guys to not only look at the money and the investment and the timeline and retirement and funding retirement and all that kind of thing, but you guys take it a step further because you also know all, I mean, you were just sharing me with the links with the prices of FEHB and the different plans and different prices, like no other advisors do that. Just so you guys know that’s not normal for advisors to get that granular with the retirees’ health insurance premiums. Most people are just very siloed, like we do with finances, you do with insurance, you do with wills and trusts, but it’s nice that you guys actually do dive into the person’s complete picture, so that’s a good

Tommy Blackburn: Well, thanks, Bryan, but really, we appreciate that.

Bryan Gay: And it’s legit. Like you guys are amazing to do that for people. Nobody else really does that.

But my track that I was going down is what we’ve been seeing, really heavy the last two years. So in late ‘24, we just got through closing out 2025. Now it’s January 26. I was mentioning, I even talked to a federal person this morning. And audience, like at my agency, we deal with Medicare supplementals, Medicare Advantage plans.

We deal with Medicare specifically and only, right? But we deal with the large majority of the population, so a small fraction of our people, our federal retirees, and we know the ins and outs of the federal retiree program as well. But we help everybody, right? With Medicare. Well, so where I’ve noticed, which is kind of sad, is these federal retirees are realizing they have a door that shut that they never even knew was open to begin with.

And it all comes back to everybody told them, “Never look at anything, don’t do anything. Just stay on the federal employee health plan and that’ll be great for the rest of your life.” That’s not good advice. You should always at least know what your options are. Don’t stick your head in the sand and just pretend like this is the only thing, which it’s a good thing. I’m not trying to take away from it. It’s a great thing,

Tommy Blackburn: Right.

Bryan Gay: But know your options so I don’t have to talk to your kids about this stuff later because it’s these 80-year-old people, these 90-year-old people, and keep in mind, their kids are 65 and 70 years old, so these 70-year-old kids are calling us about their 90-year-old mom or dad who is a federal retiree, and they’re saying, “Man, my dad’s paying a fortune for this,” or, “My mom’s paying a fortune for that. I don’t know what’s going on. I thought it was always good.”

It is good if you do things the right way. But what I was gonna real quickly talk about is there’s lots of options, but there’s usually these three main options. And again, this is not a one-size-fits-all. It depends on people’s spouses, the ages of the spouses.

It depends on if somebody has kids on their federal employees plans. But the three main segments with their options is either they stay with, again, this is Medicare majority, so it’s either they are starting in, they keep their Federal Blue plan and they don’t add Medicare. They just keep Federal Blue.

They roll with it just like they’ve had the last 20, 30, 40 years. It works the same, acts the same, is the same, ’cause it’s the same thing. It’s just the Federal Blue Plan. Well, it’s a good plan, right? They can do option number two. This middle program where it’s kind of like a double. Now they’re paying for it, but they have, in the option number two, the middle here, they’re having, these people have their federal blue plan, plus they added Medicare to the mix.

Well, that’s pretty nice. It ain’t free, but it’s pretty nice because when they have their federal blue plan and Medicare, they have great coverage because they’re gonna basically paying nothing when they go to the doctors or go to the hospitals or have like that. Now they’re paying more per month for option two, but as they’re using it, as they’re using their federal blue and Medicare combined, it’s really good coverage.

It’s just not cheap. It’s quite expensive. So it’s federal blue by itself, federal Blue plus Medicare, or if people knew the real cost on these plans that are available to everybody in the public, then some people might choose to do Medicare and a Medicare supplement or some other type of Medicare plan outside of the federal government.

While that’s scary, it’s just math. So sometimes these people are looking at this going, “Wow, that’s a great option. Option number three is a great option.” But here’s the problem with that. It’s a little too little too late because with these Medicare plans, number three, some of these Medicare plans that are available to everybody in the public, they’re only available to certain people at certain times in your life.

And if you didn’t know that option was around and you left that period of time, that door is closed and you can’t get that option anymore. What used to be available is no longer available. And Tommy, that’s what I was kind of talking about with you mainly, is there’s so many of these people who their kids are calling, saying, “I wish my mom or dad knew about this, this, and this. Because that’s what I just bought for myself. ‘Cause now I’m 65. My dad, who’s been on Medicare or the FEHB, I wish he could have had this plan.” It’s too little too late. Or some of these people who are federal retirees, they’re 71, 72 years old now, and now they’re feeling more of a squeeze financially. And they go, “Hey Bryan, what are our options?”

I’m like, “Your options are very limited now. Because you didn’t look at these things when you were turning 65.” You have to look at these options when you’re turning 65. ’cause if you go past 65 and six months, for most people, I did not say everybody. I said most people always say, “You said everybody.” Never said everybody.

Tommy Blackburn: There’s always exceptions.

Bryan Gay: But for most people, once you turn 65 and a half, the door shut. And that option is not available anymore. So I’m not telling you what you should do because everybody is quite different, but it’s gonna be important for somebody to really look at it and go, “Here’s my option, here’s my option, here’s my option. I know what my options are, I know how those options work. I know how much those options cost. I can work with a great financial advisor and group. And make a decision what’s best to us.” So they don’t have those regrets later, or they can’t say, “Well, I wish I had known that, ” or “Nobody ever told me that,” kind of thing.

So it’s better to have a decision and decline it than never even know that was an option on the table to begin with. So that’s the main takeaway for what I would say today.

Tommy Blackburn: Yep, we would agree with you. FEHB is awesome, particularly for as many as our federal employees. They retire much earlier than the private sector does, and so it’s a great bridge.

We talked in the last episode about how ACA is a mess right now. People’s premiums are going insane. Being able to be safe and FEHB until we get to the next decision point, which would be Medicare age, assuming that we retired before 65. That’s a heck of a benefit. I don’t think anybody being able to stay under the umbrella of FEHB in early retirement, is fantastic.

Then, when we get to that Medicare age again, assuming that we’ve retired before age 65. Certainly, decision points need to be evaluated. And I think as you were, we were talking earlier, you’re saying when you’re getting these 80, 90, or even 70-year-old, even if we wanted to go into Medicare at that point, we’re paying late enrollment penalties because, again, there are exceptions. Neither of us are saying everybody. We know there’s always exceptions to the rule and some of these patterns we see quite frequently, but in general, we’re gonna have 10% penalties per year for the–that we were late for the rest of our life. Right? So these premiums, if we miss that boat, could be pretty high.

And you may have also been. I think it’s hard to get into a supplement once you’ve missed that open enrollment window. I think that’s what you also were, or that initial enrollment periods, which you’re alluding to there.

Bryan Gay: Mm-hmm. Yeah, that’s exactly right.

Tommy Blackburn: Okay. And hey, reel me in, Bryan, if I’m misstepping here or if we need to correct something I’m saying by all means.

Bryan Gay: No, you’re good. ‘Cause that’s the thing.

Tommy Blackburn: Okay.

Bryan Gay: Like we hear people all the time, like, “Well, my dad should probably get Medicare now.” Well, no, your dad’s 80 years old. And they’re like, “But he’s paying all these copays. He’s paying all these deductibles.” If he had Medicare, he wouldn’t pay those deductibles. If he bought Medicare now, he’s gonna be paying four or $500 a month for Medicare. Why would you pay $500 a month for Medicare? That’s $6,000 a year just to get away from a deductible or a copayment? Like, no. So, but again, same thing. That’s what they say. They’re like, “Well, I didn’t know there was penalties. I didn’t know it wouldn’t make sense to do this later.”

Tommy Blackburn: You never wanna be in that situation

Bryan Gay: You didn’t know because you never ask.

Tommy Blackburn: Or somebody that you helped–well, we’re not always perfect, but we certainly try to cover it and we try to, this is why we love having resources like Bryan available to us.

And you were mentioning, you thought it was cool that we’ve got that look through the health insurance options and shared that with Bryan now ’cause he thought it was neat and it’s, I just share this with the audience and this is the level of collaboration we wanna have with other experts like Bryan, where it’s like, “Hey, here’s some more information that you maybe didn’t know where to go find it, ’cause that wasn’t the world.”

But the way his wheels are turning, I’m sure he is gonna go look through it and come back to us and say, “Hey, guys, here’s some things for you to think about,” as you’re talking with your clients. Now that I see some more of this data, which is gonna be tremendously helpful to us and our clients to have his continued expertise weigh in.

Because life changes, and we wanna make sure we adapt as things change. These premiums are getting more and more expensive to this point. We certainly, one of the things we like to do typically is, and this may change, the advice may change and it is certainly circumstantial, is, “Hey, let’s go down to basic. That lowers the premium. And then let’s go into Medicare B. And then we’ve got our total coverage. Not cheap, but we’ve got our foot in the door in Medicare. We are probably not gonna pay anything out of pocket and we’ve maintained FEHB.” That’s at least typically a pattern we like to see.

Foregoing Medicare altogether, many times when we’re gonna see that is we’re a very high earner, high income, even in retirement, whether it’s earned income or just retirement income sources, which Bryan and I were chatting about for–it’s not uncommon. This is not the entire federal retiree workforce at all, but a lot of what we see among our clients is it’s not uncommon for them to be retired military.

So they’ll have a military pension, they’ll have served a civil service career or maybe a state service career, so they’ll have a pension there and then throw in two social securities before we’ve even added in investment income or anything coming elsewhere. Very quickly, we’re in high brackets, and high Medicare, what are called IRMAA bracket.

So that’s maybe the off cases where it would be like, you’re gonna get hit so hard with these, what we also call success taxes of IRMAA. That maybe it’s actually cheaper to just stay on federal alone. It’s not a decision we make lightly because we realize, and so hopefully I’m just alluding to these are some of the conversations as you think through this, that we need to be thinking about.

Some other things I’ve seen, Bryan, we were chatting about briefly was, they now have those federal, and you had some good cases here if we have time or at least some anecdotes, is they now have the Federal Advantage plan options that folks can go through.

And in the previous, one anecdote for me is I’ve had a client say they were looking very hard at it, ’cause as you said, they’ve watched their premiums go up and they’re now looking to, “Hey, maybe if I go to one of these advantage plans, I could lower this premium.” Thankfully, I say thankfully, they were doing their homework.

And found that the doctors that we go to would not be under this advantage plan. So at least they were cognizant before they made any changes there. And that’s one of the wrinkles of an advantage plan in general, is we probably have a more limited network that we’re looking at. Interesting, I thought, Bryan, a previous episode we talked about.

Once you’re on the bus, once you’re on advantage, it is pretty hard to get off. It’s not impossible. Again, we never say anything in an absolute here, but to go from the bus back to traditional Medicare is typically pretty difficult. And so under the OPM umbrella, as you called it though, we can go, I believe, from an advantage plan back to one of these basic or standard plans if we found that we didn’t like it.

Bryan Gay: Yeah, that’s right. ‘Cause if they’re still underneath OPM, then any plan that’s offered through OPM, they can switch to during the OPM open enrollment period. So I’ve had a handful of people call me about those things, like, your client actually caught it beforehand. He’d be surprised how many don’t catch it until it’s too late, and they would’ve switched to a different plan under OPM.

That plan takes effect January 1st. They don’t think anything of it until February, March or April when they start trying to go back to their doctors again. And next thing you know, the doctor’s not covered by that plan. The doctor’s not doing this. Their specialist is not covered. Their hospital that’s in their local area’s not covered, and they’re like, “Well, this plan’s terrible.”

Well, you’re gonna have to deal with a terrible plan for the rest of the year. But then you can still move.

Tommy Blackburn: But thankfully, it’s only one year, right?

Bryan Gay: Yeah. It’s one per year. Yeah. And that’s called a learning experience. But sometimes you’d rather have other people have the learning experience and you can learn from their experiences, so you don’t have your own experience. But that goes for all those plans that are in there. I mean, there’s the NALC, the National Association of Letter Carriers. There’s the Blue Cross plans…there’s a lot of plans available under OPM, and some are good and some are not so good for certain people in certain areas.

So you just have to be aware of what you’re doing. You don’t just willy-nilly change different stuff without looking into it. So it’s vital that these people go through and actually understand what they’re doing and the choices that they’re making so they don’t find out the hard way that either the options that they could have had or gone. Or they’re on the wrong plan and now they’re stuck on the wrong plan for the whole year.

Tommy Blackburn: Well, I can’t say enough how awesome it is to have you as a resource for our clients, particularly as the world continues to change and we think about our options available to us and hopefully in a timely one.

I mentioned that we have and you have experienced a lot. We have a lot of folks with a military background. Typically, they’re retired and have even done a second career by the time we interact with them and still actually before Medicare age. So we kind of walk them through what is TRICARE, TRICARE for life, which I know you’re very familiar with, and I believe even grew up under TRICARE, if I ever recall correctly.

Bryan Gay: Yep. Good job. Good memory.

Tommy Blackburn: So I was curious is there any, and hopefully that speaks to the client base or the audience as well, that it’s even a personal connection to you. Like it personally impacted you. So they can have a little bit more confidence and trust when they’re talking with you. Any updates from a TRICARE for Life that you think’s worth sharing? And I know I didn’t, I don’t think I prepped you on that, so I apologize if there’s no updates to share, but I just figured we’ll go ahead and check in on it.

Bryan Gay: I could talk real quick about that. I would say if somebody has TRICARE for life, that’s almost impossible to be.

I mean, it really is. Like, it’s the greatest. I mean, like I said, like good memory, again, I grew up on TRICARE for life. I was adopted by my grandparents. My grandfather was a 22-plus-year veteran in the Navy. Army people don’t hold that against me. But you know, I grew up in Oklahoma. I mean, the stitches in the top of my head, they were from Tinker Air Force Base.

Like I love the military, thank God for the military, ’cause without it, like we would’ve been in a really bad situation without the pension and the healthcare. So, yeah. Extremely familiar with that. But that adds yet another wrinkle to these federal retirees because then they don’t just have the federal blue with nothing, no Medicare, federal blue with Medicare, Medicare with Medicare supplement. That adds another layer of, “Hey, they also have TRICARE for life,” right? So there’s all these different wrinkles that can come into play. And again, when you start having spouses and kids and all these things play in, it’s just too much for a normal person who’s not engulfed in this every single day to be able to go, “Oh, well that’s how that works and this is how that works and this is how this works. Which one do you think is gonna be right for you?” Well, then they can go, “Oh, well, thank you for simplifying that, that makes a lot more sense. I think I’ll do this one.” Great. That’s the one you want. There you go. Have a good day. But it’s nice to have those options.

Tommy Blackburn: Well, you’ve been very helpful

Bryan Gay: Yeah.

Tommy Blackburn: Yeah. Well, I was gonna say, you’ve been very helpful for us, even with our background, dealing with clients with this in both FEHB and TRICARE for life situations. It’s been really great tag teaming with you. And I love, hopefully the audience is hearing, we’ve said it before, Bryan is saying it too.

TRICARE for Life is the best coverage you can get out there. It’s all circumstantial. Yes, we come across plenty of times where rolling up on the FEHB, if you’re that high-income retired military person, you know those Medicare premiums, you can make a case. There are situations, but by and large, paying those IRMAA charges and having TRICARE for life is still a phenomenal setup.

Well, Bryan, I guess we’ll go ahead and shut it down. I know you’ve got to run. Before we do, did you have anything burning you needed to get out there? I just wanna give you the opportunity.

Bryan Gay: Well, thanks. No, I just appreciate the opportunity again to come in and get to speak with you guys, and nice to see your face again.

And, obviously, if you guys need me for anything, feel free to reach back out to us. We’ll get you, we’ll get back on the calendar and do it again. Hopefully, this was beneficial for the consumers or the people who are listening to these podcasts. And we’re always a resource for Medicare insurance, so if they need us, they can call us anytime.

Tommy Blackburn: Absolutely. We can’t speak highly enough of boomer insurance there based out of, I think you’re based out of Richmond, or at least that’s gotta be the nearest metro there. But thank you as always for being on here. We’ll certainly have you back on. You’re kind of becoming a standard here and the podcast, even if it’s annually.

Hopefully, it’ll be more than annual. It’s great to see you again, wish we saw you more frequently, and a sincere thank you for not only helping us be better advisors, but helping our clients and the public in general. For our audience, we hope that you’ve enjoyed this educational material. If you can, hit the bell, like us, send us a comment, or questions if you have them.

Same thing, I think, to Boomer Insurance Group. Reach out to them. They’re a phenomenal resource. And I think there was a quote I was gonna say, which is around this educational perspective, is that the great aim of education is not knowledge but action, so we hope today inspires you to take some action.

The topics discussed on this podcast represent our best understanding of federal benefits and are for informational and educational purposes only, and should not be construed as investment, financial planning, or other professional advice.

We encourage you to consult with the office of personnel management and one or more professional advisors before taking any action based on the information presented.

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