Medicare Part A: hospital insurance

What Part A covers

• Inpatient care in a hospital, including a semi-private room, meals, nursing and drugs given as part of inpatient treatment.
• Skilled nursing facility care after a qualifying inpatient hospital stay of at least 3 days, for up to 100 days per benefit period.
• Hospice care for people who are terminally ill.
• Some home health care, such as part-time skilled nursing or therapy.
• Inpatient care in a religious nonmedical health care institution.

What Part A costs in 2026

Part A is premium-free if you or your spouse paid Medicare taxes for at least 40 quarters. Otherwise you can buy it: $311 a month with 30 to 39 quarters, or $565 a month with fewer than 30.

When you use care, these amounts apply in each benefit period:

• Hospital deductible: $1,736, which covers days 1 to 60.
• Days 61 to 90: $434 a day.
• Days 91 and beyond: $868 a day for each of your 60 lifetime reserve days. After those, you pay all costs.
• Skilled nursing facility: $0 for days 1 to 20, up to $217 a day for days 21 to 100, and all costs after day 100.

Benefit periods: why you can pay the deductible more than once

Part A's deductible isn't yearly. A benefit period starts the day you're admitted as an inpatient and ends when you've gone 60 days in a row without inpatient hospital or skilled nursing care. If you're admitted again after that, a new benefit period starts and the deductible applies again. There's no limit on the number of benefit periods you can have in a year.

Inpatient or observation? It matters

Being in a hospital bed overnight doesn't always mean you're an inpatient. If the hospital keeps you under observation, you're an outpatient and your care is billed under Part B instead. Observation days also don't count toward the 3-day inpatient stay required for skilled nursing facility coverage. Ask the hospital which status you're in.

Filling Part A's gaps

Every Medigap plan pays the Part A hospital coinsurance and adds 365 extra hospital days. Most plans also pay some or all of the Part A deductible. In a Medicare Advantage plan, the plan sets its own cost sharing for hospital stays, subject to its yearly out-of-pocket limit.