Finding the Right Plan
Four Tips for Choosing a Plan
Be smart when choosing a Medicare plan by following the tips below.
Searching for someone else? See Helping Someone with Medicare for valuable advice.
Visit Helpful Resources for links to additional information about Medicare and Medicare plans.
1. Try Walk Me Through
If you understand your options, but you’re still not sure what Medicare plan is right for you, our easy-to-use tool Walk Me Through can help. We’ll recommend plans based on your answers to a few simple questions.
2. Do Your Research
It’s best to start thinking about your Medicare plan options before you turn 65. The more you familiarize yourself with Medicare, the more comfortable you’ll be choosing a plan. We’ve put together the following sections to help make Medicare easier to learn.
- What is Medicare?
- If you’re not sure where to start, this is the perfect place.
- Medicare Options
- Gives a summary about each of your plan options.
- Original Medicare, Medicare Advantage and Medicare Supplement
- These sections provide a more detailed description about each plan type.
- Prescription Coverage Basics
- Here you’ll find must knows about getting prescription drug coverage.
- What’s the Coverage Gap?
- Clarifies the coverage gap and how it relates to your prescription coverage.
3. Know Key Dates
You can only enroll in most Medicare plans at certain times during the year.
Make sure you understand When You Can Enroll in the plans you’re considering.
4. Think Cost, Coverage and Convenience
| Cost | What’s my budget? Consider how much you can pay per month and how much you can pay for prescription drugs and medical services, like doctor visits. Decide if you’d rather pay more per month or more when you use services. |
|---|---|
| Coverage | What’s covered and what’s not? Are there specific services you need help paying for? Look them up in the Summary of Benefits or Evidence of Coverage to see what you would pay. |
| Are the drugs I take covered? If you’re interested in prescription drug coverage, make sure your drugs are covered by searching for them in the Medicare Part D Formulary. | |
| Convenience | What doctors and hospitals can I go to? Are your doctors on our broad list of providers, or do you need the flexibility to choose any doctor? We offer plans for both situations. Learn about Our Plans to see your options or use our Provider Directory Search to find a doctor. |
| What else do I get? Health Alliance Medicare offers lots of free extras that can help save you time and money. See Extras for details on our programs. |
Helping Someone with Medicare
A family member or a friend may need you to help them find or enroll in a Medicare plan. If you’re searching for someone else, here are some things you’ll want to do.
Start early
Make sure you give yourself enough time to research and learn about Medicare plan options. Because people can only enroll in Medicare at certain times during the year, find out these dates right away.
See When You Can Enroll to learn key dates.
Talk to others
Discuss what you learn with anyone else who may need to help the person you’re helping. Explain what you know and ask questions to make sure you’re all on the same page.
Find out drug needs
Determine what prescription drugs the person you’re helping takes and what they cost. It’s a good idea to make a list. Look at Part D prescription coverage options to see if prescription coverage may work to help cover these drug costs.
Consider doctors, specialists and hospitals
If you’re searching for someone who needs to see a specific doctor, you may want to make sure that doctor is listed in the plan’s Provider Directory.
If the person you’re helping needs to be able to choose any doctor, look at options like a PPO plan or a Medicare Supplement plan.