Insurance Agent Forum

[wilkin]

Medicare experts - please verify my thinking here. I have a prospect who became eligible for Medicare Part A back in Feb of 1995 and Part B in August of 1995. She enrolled in a Med Supp with UA at that time. She turns 65 in August of 2007. I believe she has a new open enrollment and can switch to another Med Supp. Correct?
Thanks.

-Bill

[Cenla Agent]

That is correct.

[Frank Stastny]

Originally Posted by wilkin

Medicare experts - please verify my thinking here. I have a prospect who became eligible for Medicare Part A back in Feb of 1995 and Part B in August of 1995. She enrolled in a Med Supp with UA at that time. She turns 65 in August of 2007. I believe she has a new open enrollment and can switch to another Med Supp. Correct?
Thanks.

-Bill

I looked into this several years ago and the official position I found was that a person is only entitled to one Open Enrollment period. (I can't remember where I saw that.) When she went on SS Disability and became eligible for Medicare she most likely used Open Enrollment at that time.

However, I have numerous clients that I have moved from a Med Supp Disability policy, under age 65, to a "regular Med Supp" policy when they turned 65 and put "Open Enrollment" as the top of the health questions on the app.

I have never had an insurance company question the Open Enrollment status of the application. Even when their answers on the app indicate that they are already on a Med Supp policy.

I would say that you can write the app as Open Enrollment based on my experience of several years of doing it with a lot of different carriers.

[Cenla Agent]

Originally Posted by Frank Stastny

I looked into this several years ago and the official position I found was that a person is only entitled to one Open Enrollment period. (I can't remember where I saw that.) When she went on SS Disability and became eligible for Medicare she most likely used Open Enrollment at that time.

However, I have numerous clients that I have moved from a Med Supp Disability policy, under age 65, to a "regular Med Supp" policy when they turned 65 and put "Open Enrollment" as the top of the health questions on the app.

I have never had an insurance company question the Open Enrollment status of the application. Even when their answers on the app indicate that they are already on a Med Supp policy.

I would say that you can write the app as Open Enrollment based on my experience of several years of doing it with a lot of different carriers.

I was unsure about this a while back and I think it was United World that told me that members on disability get another Open Enrollment at age 65.

I also seem to remember being told they can change supps within that 6 month period as well (because they found a better or cheaper plan), but I haven't had this come up yet.

[Frank Stastny]

Originally Posted by Cenla Agent

I also seem to remember being told they can change supps within that 6 month period as well (because they found a better or cheaper plan), but I haven't had this come up yet.

I know for a fact that during the 6 month open enrollment period they can change companies and plans as often as they want and each app will be Open Enrollment.

I'm sure there will be no problem writing her as Open Enrollment.

[senior-advisor-indiana]

They do get an open enrollmetn when they turn 65 no matter if they were on disablility or not. At least that is what medicare told me when I called about my mom a couple years ago. Of course it depends on who you talk to at medicare. If I don't get an answer I like I ask for a different person to talk to. They usually have a different answer

[wilkin]

Thanks for all the replies. I too am quite certain she will be eligible for an open enrollment pass and am going to submit it as such.

[insurance0707]

You shouldn't have any problem when it comes to the Med supp. If you were submitting a Part D prescription plan or an MA plan than it would get rejected. I had a client that had been on Part A & B of Medicare years before he turned 65. When I submitted a Humana prescription plan it got rejected because Medicare did not consider him in open enrollment. Medicare will check when they went on Part B. Thankfully he was losing his group coverage so he qualified for a SEP enrollment. We just had to provide a credible coverage letter.