Medicare Part A: what it actually covers.

Published July 27, 2026 · By Erik Roti, Options.Health

Medicare Part A covers inpatient hospital stays, skilled nursing facility care, hospice, inpatient rehabilitation, and some home health services. About 99% of beneficiaries get it premium-free, since it’s funded by payroll taxes paid over a working career. But “free” premium doesn’t mean free care — the cost-sharing structure has real teeth, and it works differently than most other insurance you’ve had.

The benefit period, not the calendar year, is what resets your deductible

Unlike Part B, which has one deductible per calendar year, Part A works in benefit periods. A benefit period starts the day you’re admitted as an inpatient and ends once you’ve been out of inpatient care for 60 consecutive days. If you’re hospitalized twice in the same year with more than 60 days between stays, you could owe the deductible — $1,736 for 2026 — more than once. There’s no limit on how many benefit periods you can have in a year.

What happens as a hospital stay stretches longer

After the deductible, Part A covers the first 60 days of an inpatient stay in full. Days 61–90 carry a daily coinsurance of $434 in 2026. Beyond day 90, you draw from a lifetime bank of 60 “lifetime reserve days,” at $868 per day — and once those are used up, for good, Part A pays nothing further for that benefit period. Past day 150 with no reserve days left, the full cost is yours.

Skilled nursing coverage is more limited than most people expect

Part A covers skilled nursing facility (SNF) care only after a qualifying inpatient hospital stay, and only for skilled care — things like physical therapy or wound care that require licensed staff, not long-term custodial care. The first 20 days are covered in full; days 21–100 carry a $217 daily coinsurance in 2026; after day 100, Medicare stops paying entirely. This is one of the most common places people assume Medicare will cover an extended nursing home stay and are surprised when it doesn’t.

Hospice and home health are covered differently

Hospice care under Part A is covered with little to no cost-sharing once a doctor certifies a terminal prognosis, and it’s one of the more generous benefits in the program. Home health services — skilled nursing or therapy provided at home — are also covered under Part A (sometimes jointly with Part B), but only when ordered by a doctor and tied to a specific medical need, not for ongoing personal care or homemaking help.