65 Plus Insurance

Medicare AEP is an Annual Enrollment Period—Every fall, you have a window of opportunity to change your health coverage and your health coverage provider without penalty.

Fast Fact: More than 55 million Americans rely on Medicare for their health care coverage. Every day, another 10,000 people turn 65, making them eligible for the government-provided health insurance program.

Once you enroll in Medicare, you can no longer contribute to a health savings account (HSA), although you can continue to take tax-free distributions from your HSA to pay for medical expenses.

What is Health Insurance Prior Authorization?
Approval that you must get from a Medicare drug plan before you fill your prescription in order for the prescription to be covered by your plan. Your Medicare drug plan may require prior authorization for certain drugs.

What is the Medicare Coverage Gap?
A period of time in which you pay higher cost sharing for prescription drugs until you spend enough to qualify for catastrophic coverage. The coverage gap (also called the “donut hole”) starts when you and your plan have paid a set dollar amount for prescription drugs during that year.

Medicare Part B 101 (medical insurance): Medical insurance helps pay for doctors’ services and many other medical services and supplies that hospital insurance does not cover.

Medicare Part D 101 (prescription drug coverage): Prescription drug coverage helps pay for medications doctors prescribe for treatment.

What are Medicare lifetime reserve days?
In Original Medicare, these are additional days that Medicare will pay for when you're in a hospital for more than 90 days. You have a total of 60 reserve days that can be used during your lifetime. For each lifetime reserve day, Medicare pays all covered costs except for a daily coinsurance.

Medicare Annual Enrollment can be a little overwhelming, but consider it your annual reminder that it is time for an important yearly task: reviewing your Medicare coverage. If you spend an hour properly reviewing the things that will be changing for the upcoming year, you can quickly and easily evaluate your options and determine if you need to make a change. If you procrastinate until it’s too late, though, you could find yourself locked into coverage that isn’t so easy to change.

Myth: Medicare covers everything:
You might assume that once you're on Medicare, it will cover all of the health services you need. But actually, there are a number of key services that original Medicare won't pay for, like dental care, vision exams, and hearing aids. Prepare to either pay for these services out of pocket, or otherwise sign up for a Medicare Advantage plan, where you may get coverage for these expenses.