If you happen to be shopping for a Medicare supplement during the months of October, November, and December, you should not be shocked to come across Medicare supplement underwriting and processing times taking 6-9 weeks. If you count the extra two-three weeks it requires to get your ID cards just after you have been authorized it could be a three month course of action from the time you submit your application for consideration.
For the duration of the first three quarters of the year Medicare recipients can count on to see typical underwriting times in the two-3 week variety with a further 1-two weeks to receive your ID cards. So, it’s not unrealistic that you could anticipate to apply for the duration of the very first week of the month and have your ID cards just before that month ended.
So, what causes this tripling in the quantity of time it requires to complete underwriting? The brief answer is A LOT of men and women are applying for coverage for the duration of this period due to a variety of situations.
Here’s a list of the primary contributors to the delays.
Amongst other things, the key situations that result in so many individuals to apply for coverage for the duration of this period consist of:
1) Individuals losing employer-sponsored heath insurance – Quite a few Medicare recipients make the selection to retire at the finish of the year and apply for Medicare supplement insurance coverage to commence on January 1 of the subsequent year as their employer-sponsored overall health insurance coverage expires on December 31. Unfortunately, a much more current and additional prevalent particular person that fits into this category is the Medicare recipient that is losing the retiree wellness insurance coverage coverage their former employer had promised to cover the rest of their lives (recent legislation allowed companies to drop this coverage). This group of persons represents over a million Medicare recipients and they are capable to commence applying for coverage on October 1st.
2) Men and women losing their Medicare Advantage plans – A current trend has noticed lots of Medicare Advantage organizations discontinue providing their plans in several regions or states or even all together. Portion of the Obama national healthcare program proposal is to pay for the program by taking money from Medicare. His quantity one concentrate has been on lowering the subsidies (quantity of money) paid to the private insurance corporations that run these Medicare Benefit plans and applying that dollars to finance national healthcare. Consequently, several of the Medicare Benefit businesses are realizing they cannot be profitable and are, as a result, deciding to no longer supply their plans. Around September, they commonly send the letters out notifying existing plan participants that they will o longer be covered by the strategy as of January 1 of the subsequent year. This group of folks has been close to or just more than a million people today the past couple of years and they’re eligible to apply as of October 1st.
3) Men and women wanting to get out of their Medicare Benefit plans – This group of people have been using a Medicare Advantage plan and are not losing their coverage but have generally been dissatisfied with the coverage provided and are opting back into normal Medicare and applying for a Medicare supplement. Folks in this category ordinarily represent several hundred thousand dissatisfied Medicare Benefit program participants and they are eligible to apply for coverage beginning November 15th.
four) Basic confusion about what instances of the year you can switch your Medicare supplement – With the numerous enrollment periods introduced with the roll out of Medicare Portion D and Medicare Advantage plans there has been a tremendous amount of confusion about when a Medicare supplement program owner can switch their Medicare supplement. The reality is that an owner of a Medicare supplemental insurance strategy can switch their plan at any point all through the year. This sort of strategy is not topic to the different enrollment periods. Nonetheless, heart powder will generally have to qualify medically for the new program in order to switch. This group of folks think they can only apply for new coverage in the 4th quarter of the year comprises a further a number of hundred persons.
So, if you add it all up you have potentially millions of Medicare recipients that can only apply for coverage, or think they can only apply for coverage, in the 4th quarter of the year.
Bottom line is if you match in one of the categories that enables you to apply prior to November 15th it would be in your greatest interest to apply as quickly as you have come to a selection about which plan you would like to go with. The consequence of procrastinating could be a three month wait for underwriting to completed and acquire you cards. Somebody applying in late November may well not see their ID cards until February even if they requested a January 1 get started.