Helping a parent through Medicare open enrolment
What you can do on their behalf, what you cannot, and how to have the conversation without taking the decision away.
By Ana Beatriz Salgado
Read the post24 posts
Longer reads on coverage, costs and deadlines
Written by the advisors here, for people working something out rather than for a search engine. No email wall, and no dated dollar figures — those live in the calculators.
Medicare
Medicare posts
13 written so far.
Helping a parent through Medicare open enrolment
What you can do on their behalf, what you cannot, and how to have the conversation without taking the decision away.
Read · 6 min
Spam calls during open enrolment: protect your plan
From mid-October the phone does not stop. Here is what a legitimate agency may and may not do, and what to say to everyone else.
Read · 4 min
Reading your ANOC letter before AEP
The Annual Notice of Change arrives in September and tells you exactly how your plan will differ in January. Almost nobody opens it.
Read · 4 min
Six weeks to AEP: your prep checklist
What to gather before 15 October so that your annual review takes thirty minutes instead of three appointments.
Read · 4 min
The turning-65 checklist
Six months out, three months out, and the month itself — what to do and when, so nothing lands as a permanent penalty.
Read · 6 min
Medicare Advantage versus Original Medicare
Not a question of which is better, but of where you would rather carry the risk: in a monthly premium, or in the year you get sick.
Read · 7 min
Guaranteed issue rights for Medicare Supplement
The windows in which a Supplement carrier must sell to you regardless of health — and what happens outside them.
Read · 5 min
The Part D out-of-pocket cap, in plain numbers
Drug spending now has a ceiling, and it changes how a plan should be chosen. Here is what the cap does and does not do.
Read · 5 min
Is that Medicare survey a scam?
Some surveys are genuine research. Others are lead generation with a clipboard. Two questions tell them apart.
Read · 4 min
Medicare Savings Programs in Georgia
State programmes that pay Medicare premiums and sometimes more, for households under certain income and asset limits.
Read · 5 min
A hurricane-season checklist for your coverage
Prescriptions, plan cards and the emergency rules that relax when a disaster is declared. Ten minutes in June saves a bad week in September.
Read · 5 min
Still working at 65? Employer cover and Medicare
Whether you can safely delay depends on one thing: how many employees your employer has.
Read · 6 min
Your doctor left your plan's network. Now what?
Four options, in the order worth trying — and the continuity-of-care rule most people have never heard of.
Read · 5 minRetirement
Retirement posts
3 written so far.
How to see an IRMAA surcharge coming
The income-related surcharge is set from a tax return two years old. Which means you can usually see it coming — and sometimes appeal it.
Read · 6 min
The triple tax advantage of an HSA
Deductible going in, untaxed while invested, untaxed coming out for medical costs. Nothing else in the tax code does all three.
Read · 5 min
Social Security claiming age: the break-even maths
Break-even charts answer the wrong question for married couples. Here is the one that matters.
Read · 6 minMarketplace
Marketplace posts
3 written so far.
What is a health insurance subsidy?
The premium tax credit is not a discount or a coupon. It is a tax credit paid in advance, and that distinction explains everything about it.
Read · 5 min
Why your premium doubled
Four ordinary explanations, in the order we usually find them — and what can be done about each.
Read · 5 min
What health insurance costs a self-employed household
Premium is the number everyone quotes. Deductible, drug tiers and network are the numbers that decide what you actually spend.
Read · 6 minBusiness
Business posts
3 written so far.
What is a level-funded health plan?
Self-funding with the sharp edges removed: a fixed monthly payment, a claims account, stop-loss cover, and a surplus question.
Read · 6 min
Reading a small-business group health renewal
The letter gives you a number. What matters is the three questions the number does not answer.
Read · 6 min
Better employee benefits without a bigger budget
Five changes that improve what staff experience without increasing what the business spends.
Read · 5 minProtection
Protection posts
2 written so far.
Term versus whole life, without the sales script
One rents cover for a defined period; the other keeps it for life and builds cash. The obligation you are protecting picks the product.
Read · 5 min
The life insurance gap most households never measure
Five minutes with a piece of paper produces a better number than any online calculator, and most households have never done it.
Read · 5 minWant the short version instead?
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