Review: What is a Medicare Advantage plan?
Medicare Advantage plans or Medicare Health plans (also know as Medicare Part C) combine your Medicare in-patient or hospitalization (Medicare Part A) and out-patient or doctors visits (Medicare Part B) coverage together - and a Medicare Advantage plan may even include your prescription drug coverage (Medicare Part D) - plus, a Medicare Advantage plan can include Supplemental Benefits related to both healthcare (hearing, dental, optical, and fitness coverage) - and non-health-related benefits such as limited meals or transportation. Medicare Advantage plans (Medicare Part C) are designated as either an "MA" (a Medicare Advantage plan without prescription coverage) or an "MAPD" (a Medicare Advantage plan with prescription coverage).
You can read more about Medicare Advantage plans here: What is a Medicare Advantage plan?
Finding Medicare Advantage plans in your Service Area
Medicare Advantage plans are available in many areas across the country on a county-by-county (or partial-country) basis usually sorted by ZIP Codes - and you can use our online Medicare Advantage plan search tool or MA-Finder designed to help you learn more about the Medicare Advantage plans that are available in your service area.
Note to the availability of Medicare Advantage plans: Medicare Advantage plans are not available in every county - and some states have very limited access to Medicare Advantage plans (or, depending on the year, residents of states like Alaska may not have access to any Medicare Advantage plans). Likewise, the Medicare Advantage plans available in one county may not be available in the next neighboring-county.
Our MA-Finder, provides basic information on the Medicare Advantage plans including "MOOP" or Maximum Out of Pocket cost limits and prescription drug cost-sharing (when drug coverage is included with the Medicare Advantage plan.
The MA-Finder is easy to use and you just need to enter your ZIP Code to get started. You can also use the search filter to narrow the type of Medicare Advantage plan you wish to review and change to MA-Finder output to see information that is important to you.
Need an Example of how to use the MA-Finder?
If you lived in the Zip Code area of 32084 (part of St. Johns County, Florida) - you can begin by just entering this 32082 ZIP Code into our on this site MA-Finder and click on "Search". If your ZIP Code crosses two or more counties, you will be prompted to choose your county that is included in the ZIP - see https://MA-Finder.com/32084.
The Medicare Advantage plan results are returned in a table below the search area. As a default, we show Medicare Advantage plans that include Medicare Part D prescription drug coverage. The information in the table provides the Medicare Advantage plan name along with a summary of the premium and drug benefit coverage.
The last column by default shows the Maximum Out of Pocket (or MOOP) benefit for the Medicare Advantage plan - this is an important feature giving you an idea of your out-of-pocket cost exposure. You can use the search tool to change the last column to also show the plan type: HMO, PPO, PFFS, etc or formulary information.
From the results in the table, you can see features of all Medicare Advantage plans and below each Medicare Advantage plan name is a rating of the plan provided by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS).
You can click on the plan name to see more details about the coverage provided by your chosen Medicare Advantage plan.
For more information about using this tool, please see our Frequently Asked Question:
Does this site offer a Medicare Advantage Plan Finder?