For PatientsIf you get a letter from your Medicare Advantage insurer this open enrollment period, make sure you’ve opened it.
This is the time of year when insurers send you letters about how your benefits will change come the first of the year. Some of those changes could be huge—-you really want to know about them.
The problem is, the one critical letter from your actual insurer is buried under a pile of direct mail from all the other Medicare Advantage insurers trying to sell you something. It’s easy to miss the legitimate one.
If you haven’t received that letter yet, call your insurance company RIGHT NOW, get another copy and review it.
The biggest changes to look for, in order, are:
- Changes in the hospitals in the network
- Changes in the doctors in the network
- Co-payments changes for medication
There are other factors but these will account for 80% of the out-of-pocket costs of your Medicare Advantage plan.
Just checking these three items will pretty much tell you whether or not you need to change to another plan. (Just don’t buy it from the guy behind a table at the mall.)
Of course, if you have your own insurance home, that is, your own dedicated insurance agent looking out for you and your Medicare Advantage insurance plan, you don’t have to worry about this.
Chances are, your agent has already set up a time to go over next year’s benefit changes and reassess your needs.
If that hasn’t happened yet, get another agent.
With as complicated as this stuff is becoming, everyone deserves their own insurance home.