Category: Medicare

The biggest name in Medicare Advantage is pulling back, and the plans it is trimming are the ones many retirees value most for their flexibility. UnitedHealthcare, the largest Medicare Advantage insurer in the country, has signaled it will drop some of its PPO plans and withdraw from certain service areas for 2027. Hundreds of thousands…

A piece of mail landing in September will decide the 2027 coverage of about 600,000 older Americans. Humana, the second-largest Medicare Advantage insurer, has confirmed it will discontinue a slice of its plans next year and notify affected members that their current coverage will not continue. The number represents roughly 8% of the company’s 7.2…

A single big year of income can quietly raise a retiree’s Medicare premiums, sometimes by hundreds of dollars a month, two years after the money was earned. The surcharge is called the income-related monthly adjustment amount, and because it looks backward at an old tax return, a one-time spike from a home sale or a…

Many people reach 65 assuming Medicare works like the job-based insurance they left behind, only to discover three large holes where teeth, eyes, and ears should be. Original Medicare was built around hospital and medical care, and it leaves routine dental, vision, and hearing services almost entirely to the individual. For retirees on fixed incomes,…

Medicare’s late-signup penalty is one of the few surcharges in the retirement system that never expires. Delay Part B without a valid reason, and the government adds a percentage to the monthly premium that follows a person for the rest of their life. The rule catches many who assumed they could enroll whenever it felt…

A Medicare Advantage plan can vanish from a person’s county, and for older enrollees with health conditions that news carries a hidden upside. Federal rules treat a discontinued plan as a trigger that reopens the door to Medicare Supplement coverage on protected terms. The catch is a tight deadline, and letting it slide can mean…

Every fall, Medicare opens a roughly eight-week window that decides what coverage a beneficiary lives with for the entire next year. From October 15 to December 7, enrollees can change plans, and the choices made stick until the following autumn. Skip it, and a person can be locked into a plan that quietly dropped a…

Starting January 1, 2027, Medicare’s second round of drug price negotiation kicks in, applying government-set ceilings to 15 of the most heavily used medications in the Part D program. The list runs from blood thinners and cancer treatments to the diabetes drug semaglutide, sold as Ozempic. Whether an individual retiree sees a smaller bill depends…

UnitedHealthcare’s preliminary filings for the 2027 plan year suggest the nation’s largest Medicare Advantage insurer may pull plans out of dozens of counties, and the fallout would land squarely on older enrollees. Nothing is locked in until the fall, but the possibility has advocates urging beneficiaries to prepare early. A discontinued plan is not just…

People who miss their first chance to sign up for Medicare do not get to enroll the moment they notice the gap. Anyone who does not sign up during the seven-month window around a 65th birthday, and who does not qualify for a special exception, is funneled into a single yearly opportunity called the General…