<prompt> Human: I married a US citizen, so I hope I can be forgiven if this is well known. Did you know you still have to budget for health insurance premiums even in retirement?Were taking a retirement planning class with a Certified Financial Planner CFP the kind with a fiduciary obligation. Heres what we learned about Medicare last night.___Theres Medicare Part A: Thats hospitalization. That is 100 covered, paid in full by the government. Edit: Well, except for the deductible. And if youre there more than a few weeks, you pay a daily coinsurance fee, 335 per day after 60 days per ulucillep belowOkay, next, theres Medicare Part B. Thats Doctors visits. Thats 50 edit:80 covered by the government. This requires you to pay Medicare a 134mo premium scales up for incomeThe other 50? edit:20 Thats up to you.Thats where Medicare Part C comes in. Part C is also called Gap Coverage. It is the PRIVATE insurance you carry to make up for the shortfalls of the government coverage. In Virginia, where I am, it runs anywhere from 70-190mo, depending on how comprehensively you are covered.Edit: Part C is actually Medicare Advantage. But its only useful in a place where a reasonable number of health care facilities participate. In Virginia, the CFP said that unless you live in NoVa and who would retire to NoVA? plan on buying Medigap.Heres a handy chart: Just to round things out, theres a Medicare Part D, which is for drug coverage, in case you dont have drug coverage in your Medigap plan 13mo.Medigap has a lot of useful stuff; depending on your plan, it can cover copays at nursing homes, your deductibles and coinsurance for Part A and Part B hospitalization and doctors bill. According to the CFP, it usually includes a drug plan so that you can avoid the donut hole problem associated with Part D coverage.There are a variety of plans from a variety of providers but they all have to offer the same stuff under their named plan.But for those keeping track at home, thats 200-325moperson for health insurance. But ideally, if you buy the Cadillac Medigap plan that controls a lot of your health costs. There may be some some glaring omissions when you get to the long-term care facility stage, but for the daily health services in your sixties and seventies, its supposed to cover your bases.___But theres always some catches. Edit: Catches vary. Check on the enrollment periods in your state.So when you turn 65, you are ELIGIBLE to enroll in Medicare. You dont HAVE to. But... you have 90 days after you lose your employer benefits to enroll in Medigap coverage or else you can be disqualified for pre-existing conditions or have your rate increase. It you get there under the deadline you get the advertised rate. And you MUST be enrolled in both Part A and Part B to get Medigap.And, for every 12 month period youre not enrolled in the Part B coverage the 134 part you pay to the government you are penalized with a 3yr permanent increase to your premiums.So if you stayed working until 68 and were on your employer plan and didnt realize that you had to enroll in Medicare you get a premium of 1341.031.031.03 or 146.43.There are a lot of gotchas like that, and there are a lot of little tweaks to the system that could make things more affordable if you knew about them and if you qualify. There were a bunch of them mentioned in the class but I didnt try to write them down because I figured theyd be different when I get to retirement age.___Im a long way off to retirement so Im basically going to retool my planning to anticipate getting a Cadillac plan and budgeting that 650mo in premiums. Ill probably also anticipate some kind of specific long-term care insurance.But anyway, this was all news to me, so I thought Id share. Further reading: Edited to add a lot of corrections and clarifications from the commenters. And thanks for the gold, anonymous citizen of reddit.  <response>: Medicare covers 80 after a small deductible, not 50. 