What Plan N covers
Medigap plans are standardised by federal rules and identified by letters — A, B, D, G, K, L, M and N in most states, with Massachusetts, Minnesota and Wisconsin standardising differently. A Plan N from one company pays the same benefits as a Plan N from another: the letter, not the company, decides the cover. What differs is the premium, the rating method and the underwriting.
Plan N pays the Part A deductible — $1,736 per benefit period in 2026 — and the Part A hospital and skilled nursing facility coinsurance, including $434 a day for hospital days 61 to 90 and $217 a day for skilled nursing days 21 to 100 in 2026. It pays Part B coinsurance, the 20% of the Medicare-approved amount for most outpatient services, except for copays of up to $20 for some office visits and up to $50 for emergency room visits that do not lead to an inpatient admission. The copay is waived if the emergency room visit leads to admission, because Part A then covers the stay.
Plan N also pays 80% of emergency care outside the United States, after a $250 deductible, up to a $50,000 lifetime maximum — Original Medicare pays nothing for emergencies abroad. It does not cover prescription drugs, dental, vision or hearing: those need separate cover, usually a Part D plan. The site's guide to Medicare plan comparison sets Plan N beside Original Medicare, Medicare Advantage and Plan G, so the trade-offs are visible in one place.
What Plan N does not pay
Plan N does not pay the Part B deductible — $283 in 2026, reset every 1 January — which you pay yourself before Plan N starts paying Part B coinsurance. Neither does Plan G: the difference between the two letters is not the deductible but what happens after it. Plan G pays all of the Part B coinsurance; Plan N pays it except for the office and emergency room copays.
Plan N does not pay Part B excess charges. A provider that does not accept Medicare assignment can charge up to 15% above the Medicare-approved amount, and that extra falls on you with Plan N. Plan G pays it. If your specialists do not accept assignment, that single row can matter more than the premium difference — check the excess-charge row on the Medicare.gov chart, and check whether your doctors accept assignment, before choosing between the two letters.
The trade-off is therefore visit volume against premium. Plan N usually costs less per month than Plan G, and the saving is real if you visit the doctor rarely: twelve office visits at the full $20 copay is $240 of copays in a year, plus the $283 deductible, before the premium saving is counted. If you visit often, or see specialists who do not accept assignment, Plan G's higher premium can be the cheaper year. Premiums for the same letter vary by company, state, age and rating method: compare quotes for the same letter in your ZIP code.
Allstate Plan N: existing policyholders only
Allstate no longer sells new Medicare Supplement plans. In May 2025 its Allstate Health Solutions unit — formerly National General — moved to paper-only applications and began withdrawing from the market state by state, and its plans page no longer lists Medicare Supplement. Allstate sold its group health business to Nationwide in 2025 and its employer voluntary benefits business to The Standard, and kept a smaller individual health unit.
If you already have an Allstate Plan N policy, it stays in force as long as you pay the premium: Medigap policies are generally guaranteed renewable, and the standardised benefits do not change because new sales have stopped. The policies were underwritten by American Heritage Life Insurance Company and National Health Insurance Company. A closed block is worth monitoring, because it no longer accepts new, younger policyholders and its insured population ages over time, which can mean higher-than-usual premium increases — but a higher increase is not certain. Read the renewal notice, compare the premium against other Plan N quotes, and do not cancel existing cover until replacement cover is approved.
ACE Plan N: closed to new applications, and the INA successor
ACE Medicare Supplement — underwritten by ACE Property and Casualty Insurance Company, a Chubb company — stopped accepting new applications after 30 June 2025, according to broker reporting published in October 2026. Chubb, the company behind ACE, now sells its new Medigap policies under a different company: INA, the Insurance Company of North America, which became its active Medicare Supplement product for new business from 1 July 2025 in approved states, rolled out state by state. If you already have an ACE policy, your coverage stays in force as long as you keep paying your premium, and it is guaranteed renewable.
One caution is needed, and this page states it plainly: some state rate listings and comparison pages published in 2026 still show ACE Plan N rates — for example, Texas listings showing ACE Plan N among the cheapest for 65-year-olds. Those listings conflict with the broker reporting that ACE closed to new applications after 30 June 2025, and the conflict is not resolved on the evidence available to this site. Treat ACE Plan N as existing-policyholder cover, and verify in your own state whether any new ACE policy is actually available to you.
The same verification applies to any carrier: Medigap availability is set state by state, and a company that sells Plan N in one state may not sell it in another. The health insurance comparison page is the starting point for products that are currently sold; this page is the record of what Plan N covers and of the two carrier names whose status has changed.
How to buy Plan N, and when underwriting applies
The best time to buy any Medigap policy is your Medigap Open Enrollment Period — the six months starting the month you turn 65 and are enrolled in Part B — when companies must sell you any Medigap policy they offer without medical underwriting. Outside that period, and outside the limited guaranteed-issue situations such as losing employer cover, a company can use medical underwriting and can decline you or charge more. Medicare Open Enrollment, 15 October to 7 December each year, is for Medicare Advantage and Part D changes: it does not give you a guaranteed right to buy Medigap.
When you compare, ask four questions: the monthly premium for Plan N in your ZIP code; how the premium is rated — attained-age pricing rises as you age, community rating does not, and issue-age pricing is set at the age you buy; whether the company has a history of large increases on its in-force block; and whether your doctors accept Medicare assignment, which decides whether the excess-charge gap matters. Compare the year's total — premium plus deductible plus likely copays — not the premium alone.
Worked example
Consider two ILLUSTRATIVE 65-year-olds, both newly enrolled in Part B. The first buys Plan N, visits the doctor four times in the year and never visits the emergency room: they pay the $283 Part B deductible, four office copays of up to $20 each, and the monthly premium. The second buys Plan N, visits the doctor fifteen times and sees a specialist who does not accept assignment: they pay the same deductible, fifteen copays, the excess charges on the specialist's bills, and the same premium — and the year's total may exceed what Plan G would have cost. These are ILLUSTRATIVE contrasts using the 2026 CMS figures; they predict no real person's costs, and no premium figure is asserted for either person.
Illustrative example only — not a fact about any real policy.