I'm Keith our great founder of Medicare on video and if you're watching this video you're likely
a client of mine so this video is only going to go out to existing clients so first off thank you
for allowing me to help you with your Medicare choices and I wanted to clear up some confusion
because we are at that time of year again it is Medicare open enrollment time where you are going
to be bombarded with mail you're also going to see every commercial on TV is talking about Medicare
Advantage primarily United Healthcare is talking Humana is talking telling you how wonderful their
Medicare Advantage plans are so a lot of people get confused on do they need to actually do
something during open enrollment you can see here the dates for open enrollment starts on October
15th and it runs through December 7th so the big question is do you need to do something and if
you're a client of mine you chose to stay with Medicare a Medicare B and you chose a Medicare
supplement to cover what a and B do not so the good news is many open enrollment does not apply
to Medicare supplement plans you don't have to do anything to continue your coverage or you can
certainly shop but you can shop any time of year you don't have to do it during open enrollment
so it takes all that away you don't have to worry about meeting any deadlines or timelines or things
like that now the reason that you chose to stay with Original Medicare and a Medicare supplement
is likely because you wanted the flexibility and the freedom to do whatever you want to do with
your healthcare decision so that's the biggest difference between Medicare Advantage and Medicare
supplement on a Medicare Advantage plan it is much more of an HMO environment where you have to go to
a networking doctors and a network of hospitals sometimes you have to get a referral to go from a
primary care to a specialist so it's definitely not as easy to use as a Medicare supplement
when you have Original Medicare with a Medicare supplement you can go to any doctor any Hospital
in the country that accepts medicare you don't have to ask for permission ahead of time so the
out-of-pocket expense is also generally much less on a Medicare supplement than it is on a Medicare
Advantage so don't worry about paying mention to all the fancy shiny things that they're trying to
convince you to come into a Medicare Advantage plan you likely would be much happier with your
Medicare supplement plan so hopefully we made that right decision right in the beginning which
is the way most people want to go so what does open enrollment apply to it applies to Medicare
Advantage plans and it also applies to Medicare drug plans if you stayed on Original Medicare
and again if your client of mine that's what you've done and you haven't met your supplement
you likely got a Medicare drug plan so this is the time of year that you could make changes to
a Medicare drug plan so the reason you might want to do that is if things change for you during the
year if you have different prescriptions now than when you started last year there may be a drug
plan that covers them better so it's worth doing a comparison and certainly happy to help with that
if you're a client just give me a call send me an email and we will run a comparison and make sure
that you have the best Medicare drug plan because this is the time you can jump in and out or change
or do whatever you want without any questions as you also may not have had a drug plan in the past
and now you want to get one this is also the time to do that so I hope that clears up some of the
confusion number one if you're a client of mine you're on a Medicare supplement plan either fgn
or fhd and you're likely going to want to stay right there so if you do want to do a comparison
we're happy to do that as well if we want to see if there's better pricing on a G versus another
Qi but you can also do that anytime during the year so a lot of times it's a lot easier to do
it when things aren't so crazy but if there's something that you like help with just give me
a call send me an email and we're happy to do that and don't worry about all the crazy people on TV
telling you about Medicare Advantage so I hope you found this helpful have a fantastic day Oh