By Susan Stewart, Licensed Insurance Agent
The Medicare Annual Enrollment Period ends on December 7. This means it’s time for you to work with an advisor to select the Medicare Advantage plan that best suits your needs.
As a licensed insurance agent who specializes in Medicare, I frequently hear complaints about how long a review takes, but your role in this process is crucial. Being prepared can save you lots of time, and it will also help ensure you get all the coverage you need. Here are a few things you can do ahead of time to make sure your Annual Enrollment Period goes smoothly.
List Your Doctors
Part of a thorough and accurate review of a Medicare Advantage plan is recording key information about all your important doctors. This includes the correct spelling of their names and addresses. As an agent, hearing the doctor is across from the library doesn’t help me get the correct address. This information is key to help me prevent one of beneficiaries’ top frustrations: finding out a doctor they love isn’t in network under their new plan.
When preparing your list, limit it to what really matters. The longer your list, the bigger the challenge of keeping everyone in network. If you’ve not seen a certain specialist in two years, maybe that provider isn’t important, and you’d be okay with seeing a different one if your original isn’t in your new network.
Also remember that contracts between doctors and carriers can change. It’s not uncommon for a doctor who was in-network during the quoting process to leave the network at some point during the year.
List Your Facilities
Facilities include more than just your preferred hospitals. Do you have an important durable medical equipment supplier? Are you in the middle of physical therapy? If a facility is important to you, don’t risk losing that facility because you didn’t mention it to your agent. Make a list of every facility that’s important to your health, and along with an accurate address for each one.
List Your Medications
Have a complete list of your prescription medications before your Annual Enrollment Period consultation. As an agent, I often wait while my clients look for their prescriptions in drawers, bags, and boxes, not remembering that they have insulin in the refrigerator. Sometimes they memorize their list of prescriptions but forget an essential medication.
Agents need the name, the dose, and the frequency of doses for all your key medications. We also need to ask important questions like: Are you happy with a generic or do you require the name brand? Does your medicine come in a tablet or a capsule? What pharmacy do you use? What street is the pharmacy on? All of these details are relevant to giving you accurate quotes of networks, tiers, formularies, and copays. You don’t have to tell us the purposes of each medication, though—that’s between you and your doctor.
Conclusion
Keep in mind that beneficiaries also do reviews during Open Enrollment from January 1 to March 31 and throughout the year. Have a place where you keep this information. The more prepared you are for your Medicare Advantage plan review, the faster it will go, the more accurate it will be, and the more peace of mind you will have. Keeping it simple and clear will prevent misunderstanding and frustration down the road. Your time matters.
Your healthcare matters. Your doctors matter. Your prescriptions matter. Be prepared.
