medicare open enrollment 2021 2022 we are at that time of year again where just
about anybody in medicare has no idea what they need to do and it's a super important
time period in the medicare world where you can make some changes so most don't
know what they should do or what they can do more importantly what they shouldn't do so i'm gonna
go through all that right now to make sure that we understand exactly what it's about i'm keith
armbruck founder of medicare on video and i help people across the country make the right medicare
choices and i can absolutely help you as well and i'm gonna go through this right now to make sure
that you understand something you could do for yourself right now to make it easy for yourself
download a copy of my book medicare made clear i give it away for free and you'll see i covered
just about every piece of medicare in this book and you'll find it written in a pretty easy to
understand way i also have videos throughout the book where i explain everything to you
in case you don't want to read through all the material you'll also find all the links
where to sign up things that you'll need now things that you'll need in the future a great
resource to keep on your computer so that you have it when you need it so just go to medicare
on video dot com forward slash free book you can download it right now and it's yours to keep so
right now we're going to talk about medicare open enrollment first thing we're going to do change
the name so we're going to now call it annual election period they have multiple names for
this same period of time in medicare which again just adds to the confusion one thing for sure
we're going to be inundated with tv commercials they're going to be on just about all hours of the
day there's going to be joe namath talking at you there's going to be jimmy j walker
mike ditka i've seen some others they tend to round up these old celebrities to talk about
how wonderful a medicare advantage plan is so it's important to understand because they can be really
not only misleading but certainly confusing in understanding exactly what they're about if
it were me the first thing i would say to you is beware with the commercials and if i were doing it
i'd ask joe namath hey can i go to any doctor any hospital anywhere in the country that i choose to
go to and joe's answer would be uh no you can't you have to stay within our network of doctors
in a local area that's generally what a medicare advantage plan is so those commercial that you
see on tv 95 of them are talking about medicare advantage plans we're going to go through that
in a second also exactly what you need to know so when is the medicare open enrollment period
oh change the name annual election period so if you hear those two phrases they're the same thing
so it starts on october 15th ends on december 7th goes into effect on january 1st so if you are
going to make a change in a medicare advantage plan or a medicare drug plan you have to
initiate that change between those window dates the october 15th and december 7th
and then it's going to go into effect on january 1st so again complicated confusing people don't
quite understand exactly what to do but we're going to walk through it right now so what can
you do in an annual election period at the end of the year you can make changes to a medicare drug
plan you can make changes to a medicare advantage plan those are really the two primary things so if
you want to go from one to another or upgrade or downgrade or do whatever you want you can pretty
much do whatever you want with a medicare drug plan during open enrollment period or a medicare
advantage plan now understand with a medicare drug plan that would likely mean you're still
on original medicare so you're not in a medicare advantage plan if you have a medicare drug plan
that is stand alone and medicare drug plans are wildly different so if you take certain drugs
at the beginning of the year you may have a drug plan that works great for those drugs but if your
regimen of drugs changes throughout the year you may need to change your drug plan at the
end of the year to better coverage what you are now taking so important to understand with a
medicare drug plan a medicare advantage plan you may be in one and you like your doctor but now
your doctor is no longer in that plan and that happens all the time so now you need to either
hope you can find the plan that your doctor is now in if he's still in a medicare advantage plan
or find a plan with a doctor that you like so that's the biggest drawback in my opinion on
medicare advantage plans is the restrictiveness of a network so you have a network of doctors
networking hospitals generally in a local area so if you travel it's a big problem
so it's important to make sure if you are in it you fully understand it now you can
also during this period of time come out of a medicare advantage plan and go back to original
medicare and get a medicare supplement plan to cover the parts that original medicare does not
a caution to be aware of in that scenario is the medicare supplement plan likely will require
medical underwriting so you have to be in pretty good health in order to qualify to do that so
again this is all stuff that we help with so if you if you're contemplating doing that just
give me a call send me an email we'll make sure you understand everything before you initiate
any of that stuff because some of this stuff if you do it you may be locked into it for a period
of time so we want to make sure we get it exactly right so now we're talking about who can do this
so if you're already in medicare part a and b and you want to enroll in a medicare advantage
plan a medicare part d plan or a medigap medicare supplement plan this is the time of year that you
can mix and match and move around and change and do things like that without so much complication
even though it's complicated in itself because you have to do it in a very specific time period so
just obviously we want to understand exactly what we're doing and how can we help we just compare
it all so we we put it together for you so that you can make an educated choice and know exactly
that come this next year it's what you want so that's certainly important and then obviously cost
is important number one factor is make sure we get the best value out of what we're doing so that's
kind of a pretty good overview of medicare open enrollment medicare annual election period it's
it's complex but you know if you have somebody like us that knows it inside outside we can make
it easy and make sure you get exactly what you want to have so i hope you found this helpful take
a minute download my book medicare video dot com forward slash free book subscribe to my channel
and you'll get updates as they come along hope you found all this helpful have a fantastic day