Actually Medicare open enrollment -- called "general enrollment" by the Medicare bureaucrats -- is scheduled for January every year. It talkes place between January and March of each year with your Medicare coverage -- both A and B or just B if you already have A going into effect in July.
Do not be confused by all the hoopla in the press starting soon about Medicare "open enrollment" being in October and November1. The October-November timeframe refers to public supplements and only applies to you if you are already on Medicare. And you have to be on both Medicare Parts A and B -- called Original Medicare by the Medicare bureaucrats. Original Medicare is usually mislabeled by the press as "traditional Medicare" (which has a different meaning).
Specifically, the Medicare open enrollment hoopla that typically starts in the press each September refers to enrollment in Part C and Part D Medicare health plans, not Medicare itself. Medicare health plans are supplements to Original Medicare. You have to already have both Part A and Part B to select one of these public2 supplements.
- If you are not already on Original Medicare at all or you only have Medicare Part A, and you do not have a a good reason (e.g., a good reason for not having it at all would be that you are just turning 65; a good reason for having A but not B is that you have been working and are now going to retire; there are other good reasons), you cannot purchase a Medicare health plan during public supplemental health plan open enrollment.
- On the other hand, if you are just turing 65 or just retiring, you can select a Medicare health plan twice... once for the rest of 2014 as soon as eligble and another for 2015 during the October-November timeframe. (And if you are on George Bush's Extra Help plan for Parts C and D, you can change Part C or Part D plans every month if you want.)
So again the October-November timeframe hoopla is just that, a lot of press hoopla.
By the way, there are a whole different set of rules -- chosen by your former employer -- if you are on retiree insurance. See another future blog post.
1The actual relevant period is October 15 to December 7 with the necessary information to make a decision available October 1. You will receive the 2015 Medicare and You booklet in September if you are eligible for a supplemental Medicare health plan (that is, you are already on Medicare). You should not wait until the last week of the enrollment period.
2More about the difference between private and public supplements in an upcoming post. The press gets this all wrong too.
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