Tips for Older Adults: Reading Your Medicare Summary Notice

If you have Medicare, you will regularly receive a Medicare Summary Notice (MSN, for people in Original Medicare) or Explanation of Benefits (EOB, for people with Medicare Advantage plans) electronically or in the mail. These notices summarize:

• The health care services provided to you
• How much Medicare or your Medicare Advantage plan paid for those services, and
• How much you may owe the provider

This tip sheet, developed for us by the Medicare Rights Center, offers four tips for how to read and understand the MSN or EOB:

1. Discover how much you may need to pay your provider.
2. Wait until you receive a bill before you make any payments.
3. Check to see if any of the services your received were denied coverage.
4. Protect yourself from Medicare fraud.