By Fred
Riccardi, Next Avenue Contributor Oct
9, 2019, 10:34am
The Fall Open Enrollment Period for Medicare
is nearly here, running October 15 through December 7. It’s the time for people
65 and older to sign up for Medicare plans for 2020 to ensure they’ll have
coverage meeting their needs. The Medicare site’s Medicare Plan Finder tool can help
find plans in your area, but it was just updated significantly. So you’ll want
to understand how to use the new version.
Below is advice on how to use the Medicare
Plan Finder and shop for Medicare during Open Enrollment. Keep in mind that if
you’re already a Medicare beneficiary and have been happy with your
Medicare plans, you’ll still want to go through this process.
The reason? Medicare Advantage
plans from private insurers and stand-alone Medicare Part D
plans for prescription drugs with Original Medicare often change
from year to year. So, your network of health care providers or list of covered
drugs may be different in 2020.
The government revised its Medicare Plan
Finder tool at the end of August to unveil a more modern design and, ideally,
an improved user experience. The previous version was text-heavy and had an
outdated look and feel.
But the updated version has flaws of its own
that you’ll need to work around.
4 Changes In the New Medicare Plan Finder
Here are the four big changes in the new
Medicare Plan Finder:
1. How you access a basic or personalized
search. The earlier Medicare
Plan Finder let you do a customized search by entering personal information
like your date of birth and Medicare number. You could then create a drug list
and choose pharmacies; then, the search results would show which Medicare plans
covered your medications and had pharmacies in your network. The drug list
would be saved and accessible through a drug list identification number.
With the new Plan Finder, you generally need
to create, or log in to, a MyMedicare account to do a personalized
search. If you don’t want to make a MyMedicare account or will be doing a
search on behalf of someone else (like your parents), you can do an anonymous
search by clicking on the link that says, “Continue without logging in.”
Your MyMedicare account has other benefits,
too. Logging in to it provides electronic access to your Medicare Summary
Notice (the health care items and services you’ve received in the past three
months), shows you the coverage you currently have and lets you see certain
health insurance claims.
2. How you find plans covering your
medications. If you created a
personalized drug list for Medicare in the past, you’ll have to enter the
information all over again in the new Plan Finder. The revised tool hasn’t
transferred previous drug list information to the new system.
3. Your out-of-pocket prescription drug costs. The old Plan Finder included the cost of
your premiums as part of its estimate of your drug costs for the year ahead.
But the new Plan Finder’s estimate of your drug costs doesn’t; it only includes
the plan’s deductible (if it has one) and your co-pays for your prescriptions.
This means to get a ballpark figure for your
drug costs for 2020, you’ll have to multiply a drug plan’s premium by 12 and
then add that amount to the other estimates for your particular plan.
4. The preferred pharmacies for Medicare Part
D plans. The new Plan Finder no
longer lists which pharmacies are a particular plan’s preferred pharmacies —
those are network pharmacies that offer covered drugs at lower out-of-pocket
costs than what you’d pay at a non-preferred pharmacy.
How to Start Searching for Medicare Plans
Now that you know how the Medicare Plan Finder
has changed, here’s how to start searching for health and drug plans:
Set aside enough time. At the Medicare Rights Center, we recommend
spending about an hour to navigate the Medicare Plan Finder log-in process,
explore the tool, enter your drugs and view your search results.
Create a list of prescription drugs you take
before beginning your search. A primary benefit of using Plan Finder is that you can create a
custom list of the drugs you take, and then it will show you which plans cover
your drugs and your estimated costs. Putting together a list of your drugs,
their dosages and whether they are brand-name or generic will help you
efficiently complete this portion of the process and get to your search
results.
Keep scrolling. The benefits summary on the Plan Finder’s
results page won’t provide all of the information about a Medicare plan, so
click on plan details to learn more.
Plan Finder organizes health and drug plan
details in one long list, which you can navigate by clicking on links on the
left to jump to different sections of the page. For a full picture of a plan’s
costs and benefits, be sure to scroll all the way through the list of plan
details.
Call plans you’re considering to confirm all
the Plan Finder’s coverage and cost information. Although the Plan Finder materials should be
up to date, it’s wise to contact a plan directly for confirmation. Before
enrolling in a plan, be sure it will cover your drugs and provide any extra
benefits listed in Plan Finder. And ask which pharmacies are its preferred
pharmacies, since the Plan Finder doesn’t say.
If you will be enrolling in a Medicare
Advantage plan, call your health care providers to confirm that they accept the
plan you intend to choose.
Use other resources for more information. You might want to visit the Medicare
Rights Center’s site, where you can find a Medicare Interactive tool to learn
the differences between Original
Medicare and Medicare Advantage and questions to ask before
joining a Medicare Advantage or Part D plan as well
as a free Fall Open Enrollment Guide.
You could also contact your State
Health Insurance Program (SHIP) or call Medicare at 1-
800-MEDICARE.
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