Health Insurance Navigator

By Lisa Zamosky

If you’re on the verge of missing the Medicare Annual Coordinated Election Period (AEP), which ends today, you may have just been given a big break.

During AEP you can sign up for or change your existing Medicare Advantage and Part D prescription drug plan. The time period has been moved up this year (AEP officially ends today), ending nearly a month earlier than in years past due to a mandate within the health reform law.

Yesterday, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) announced in a memo that it will be “providing additional flexibility to the current Enrollment Guidance to ensure that all enrollment requests submitted during the AEP are processed.”

Here are the circumstances under which CMS is allowing some breathing room:

Paper enrollment applications: If you’re submitting your plan choices on a paper application, it must be post-marked by December 8^th . That gives you an extra day.

Calls to SHIPs or Plan Sponsors: If you’ve attempted to sign up through your State Health Insurance Assistance Program (SHIP) or called 1-800-Medicare and have had trouble getting through, leave a message because folks working those programs will have an additional three days to call you back as long as you initiated the process before tomorrow, December 8^th.

“If someone calls a SHIP today and it is backlogged they are allowing them to call beneficiaries back tomorrow or Friday to do an enrollment,” explains Elaine Wong Eakin, executive director of California Health Advocates, a nonprofit Medicare advocacy and education organization.

Flexible without Bending

So why is the government willing to cut seniors a break? According to Wong Eakin, there have been a number of glitches in the systems set up to help people enroll in Medicare Advantage and Part D drug plans.

“Last week and throughout the AEP there have been periods where Plan Finder wasn’t working,” says Eakin. Plan Finder is the tool housed on Medicare.gov that allows people to compare and sign up for coverage online.

In addition, she says, CMS realized that in some states and/or regions throughout the country post offices close early, meaning that if someone mailed an enrollment application later today, it might not get postmarked until tomorrow. The government wanted to allow some flexibility in these cases.

Don’t Get Lazy

Don’t take this extension to mean that if you haven’t yet signed yourself up for Medicare Advantage or Part D drug coverage that you can kick back for a few days.

Today is still officially the last day to sign up. Again, you’ll only be given leeway if you initiate enrollment with a SHIP or other Medicare organization that is so overwhelmed with last-minute sign ups it can’t get to you before the end of today.

Have you signed up? If not, call you State Health Insurance Counseling and Assistance Programs (SHIPS) today for free access to counselors who will help you compare Medicare plans and sign up.