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.
By Ana Beatriz Salgado, Cedar Landing Benefits
On the coast, the season is part of the calendar. Households here prepare their homes carefully and their coverage hardly at all, which is the wrong way round when an evacuation involves a fortnight away from your pharmacy.
This takes ten minutes.
Prescriptions first
Ask your plan about an early refill before the season, and know that when a disaster is declared many plans relax refill limits and allow out-of-network pharmacies temporarily. Those relaxations are real but time-limited, and you have to ask.
Keep a written list of medication and doses in the evacuation bag. A pharmacist three states away can work from a list; they cannot work from memory.
Cards, numbers and care away from home
Photograph your Medicare card, your plan card and your photo identification, and store them somewhere you can reach from a phone with no signal at home. Add your advisor's number and your plan's number to your contacts.
Emergency care is covered wherever you are. Routine care away from home is where network rules still apply, and where a phone call before the appointment saves an argument afterwards.
An estimate for planning, not a quote. Medicare and the Marketplace set your real figures.
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