Open Enrollment – A lot of Information – Not Many Answers

While I appreciated Joe Namath’s skills as a great football quarterback, I’m not sure if he’s the best source of accurate information concerning the many Medicare choices available during this year’s Medicare open enrollment period. I’m also not a big fan of the deluge of mail I’ve received lately promising me a plethora of benefits at a low price. It’s difficult to separate the accurate information from the hype. I’m not going to beat around the bush here, if you have questions concerning the choices you have concerning Medicare, I think you will find it worth your while to click the Registration Link and register for our virtual town hall. It will be held this Wednesday, November 17^th at 2:00 PM ET. We hope to answer common questions and allow you to ask questions about Medicare and the options you have during open enrollment.

As you all probably already know, during our working years (which for some continues after we turned 65) we all paid into Medicare. When we turned 65 we all became eligible to register for basic Medicare and to start getting the benefit of the money we paid over the years. Most of us who use basic Medicare (known as fee for service), about 81%, have some sort of supplemental insurance, and over 40% have Medicare Advantage, which means this open enrollment period should be pretty important to most of us. It’s a chance to review both the changes in our current insurance plan and the changes in our health. I’m not going to get into a huge detailed discussion here about the details on how this review should be done, but I will talk about why it is important for each of us to do it.

There are a number of things that you should consider during open enrollment. There are new treatments that have been discovered that might benefit us, we should find out if our insurance plan covers those treatments. The opposite may also be true, important drugs or treatments that we currently use may be removed from your plan next year. Your plan’s deductibles, co-pays and co-insurance may change next year. Changes in your health may certainly impact the availability and cost of your healthcare for these new health conditions. New insurance plans may come available in your area or existing plans may cease to be available. Medicare Advantage plans particularly may become available as a choice in your area. All of these situations may affect both the cost and the availability of treatments for you next year. I hope you’ve started to consider some of these possibilities and maybe generated some questions. Our town hall is an excellent place to possibly answer some of those questions.

One important thing you should think about is the fact that medicine is becoming more and more personalized. The one size fits all approach to healthcare is not a valid healthcare approach. It’s certainly becoming more complicated and it is up to each of us to understand both the financial and health implications of the choices available.

All of the talk about the changes to Medicare that may come about shouldn’t delay our review. These changes are still being discussed and many of the proposed changes won’t be implemented for a few years. All the rhetoric should not fool you into putting off your review. The open enrollment period ends on December 7^th.

We have some excellent panel members for this Wednesday’s virtual town hall. I think it will be worth your time to dial in, the information will be straightforward and accurate and it will give you the chance to ask questions. Just click the Registration Link and get registered for this informative discussion.

Best, Thair