Guides
Written to be read once and understood.
No dollar amounts, because those change every year and a dated figure is worse than none. No plan names, because what is available depends on your county. Just how the thing works and what to watch for.
Enrollment
The windows, and which ones close for good
Some Medicare deadlines can be caught up on later. Two of them cannot, and knowing which is which matters more than anything else here.
Enrollment
Still working at 65 — take Part B or delay it?
It depends on how many people your employer has, and getting it wrong causes a penalty that lasts as long as you have Medicare.
Enrollment
What counts as a life change, and what it lets you do
Moving, retiring, losing employer coverage or a spouse dying each open a window outside the usual dates.
Prescriptions
How to check whether your drugs are actually covered
A plan can cover a medication and still make it expensive. The tier matters as much as the yes or no.
Prescriptions
When the pharmacy says it needs approval first
Step therapy, prior authorisation and quantity limits explained, and what to ask your doctor to do about each.
Prescriptions
Why your drug costs changed in January
Formularies are rewritten every year. A medication can move tiers or leave the list without anybody telephoning you.
Choosing
Advantage or Supplement — the questions that actually decide it
Not the premium. Your doctors, your medications, whether you travel, and how much uncertainty you can live with.
Choosing
Checking whether your doctor is really in the network
Directories go out of date. Here is how to verify it properly, by name, before you enrol rather than after.
Choosing
What the Annual Notice of Change is telling you
The envelope that arrives in September and gets filed unopened. It lists exactly what is changing about your plan.
Costs
What Original Medicare leaves you paying
A walk through the gaps — the hospital deductible, the twenty per cent, and the absence of any annual ceiling.
Costs
Help paying for Medicare, and how to ask for it
Extra Help, Medicare Savings Programs and manufacturer schemes. Many people who qualify never apply.
Costs
Why two people on the same street pay different premiums
Income affects what you pay for Parts B and D. It is assessed from a tax return two years old, and it can be appealed.
Avoiding trouble
What a legitimate Medicare call sounds like
Nobody from Medicare will telephone you out of the blue asking for your number. Here is how to tell the difference.
Avoiding trouble
Reading a Medicare Summary Notice
It is not a bill. It is the statement that lets you spot a charge for something that never happened.
Avoiding trouble
How to appeal when care or a drug is refused
There are several levels and the deadlines are short. Denials are overturned more often than people expect.
No guides in that subject yet.
How these are written
Every guide is dated, reviewed, and figure-free.
Reviewed, with the date shown
Each guide carries the date a licensed adviser last verified it, printed on the page. A guide that has not been reviewed within twelve months does not publish — the build stops.
No amounts, deliberately
Premiums, deductibles, penalties and income thresholds are revised annually. We describe structure and send you to Medicare.gov and 1-800-MEDICARE for numbers, which are correct today in a way a page written last spring cannot be.
No plan names
What is available to you depends on your county. A guide naming plans would be wrong for most readers, so none of them do.