Medicare Part A helps cover your inpatient care in a hospital. This includes critical illness hospitals and skilled nursing facilities (certain conditions apply). Medicare Part A also helps cover hospice and home health care. You must meet certain conditions to get these Medicare Part A benefits.
Most people automatically get Medicare Part A coverage without paying a monthly premium. This is because they or their spouse paid Medicare taxes while working.
Medicare Part A coverage includes:
• Hospital Stays. This includes a semi-private room, meals, general nursing and other hospital services and supplies. Medicare Part A coverage also includes inpatient care you get in critical access hospitals and mental health care. Medicare Part A does not include private-duty nursing or a television or telephone in your hospital room, nor does Medicare Part A pay for a private room – unless medically necessary. Inpatient mental health care in a psychiatric hospital is limited to 190 days in your lifetime.
• Blood. This includes pints of blood you get at a hospital or skilled nursing facility during a covered stay.
• Skilled Nursing Facility Care. Medicare Part A covers a semi-private room, meals, skilled nursing and rehabilitative services, and other services and supplies – but only after a three-day inpatient hospital stay for a related illness or injury, and only for up to 100 days in a benefit period. This is only provided certain conditions are met. Medicare Part A does not cover most long-term care.
• Home Health Services. This Medicare Part A coverage is limited to reasonable and medically necessary part-time or intermittent skilled nursing care and home health aide services, and physical therapy, occupational therapy, and speech-language pathology ordered by your doctor and provided by a Medicare-certified home health agency. Medicare Part A also includes medical social services, other services, durable medical equipment such as wheelchairs, hospital beds, oxygen, and walkers, and medical supplies for use at home.
• Hospice Care. Hospice care is used for people with a terminal illness. Medicare Part A coverage includes drugs for symptom control and pain relief, medical and support services from a Medicare-approved hospice, and other services not otherwise covered by Medicare (like grief counseling). Hospice care is usually given in your home, or may be in a facility. Medicare Part A will cover some short-term hospital and inpatient respite care (care given to a hospice patient so that their regular caregiver can rest).

You generally don’t pay a monthly premium for Medicare Part A if you or your spouse paid Medicare taxes while working. This is called “premium-free Medicare Part A.”

However, if you are not eligible for premium-free Medicare Part A, you may be able to buy Medicare Part A if you meet one of these conditions:

• You’re age 65 or older, you’re entitled to or enrolling in Medicare Part B, and you meet the citizenship or residency requirements;
• You’re under age 65, disabled, and your premium-free Medicare Part A coverage ended because you returned to work.

If you choose to purchase Medicare Part A, you must also have Medicare Part B and pay monthly premiums for both.

If your income is limited, your state may help you to pay for Medicare Part A and / or Medicare Part B.