Question: When will my new insurance for 2021 begin?

Answer: During open enrollment many people evaluate their insurance coverage and make a change to a better plan for their needs in the coming year.

Once this has been done, the first thing that usually happens is you receive a welcome letter from the new plan. If you received that welcome letter, you are all set. The new company received your enrollment and the rest of your material is on its way.

The next item you will receive is a packet with your material, the evidence of coverage, and summary of benefits. Your ID card is sometimes in this packet. It is sometimes sent separately. The last item you will get is the bill for your premium. This could actually come to you later in January. Watch the mail and when it arrives pay it, but it is important to realize this type of insurance will begin even if your premium is not yet paid. You have until the end of January to pay the premium.

It is also important to know that your old company will also send you its 2021 material. The assumption was you would stay with that plan, so a packet was printed and addressed for you and probably mailed before your old company was notified that you had changed your coverage. You can discard that 2021 information from your previous insurer.

Your old company will also send you a letter informing you that they were informed of your disenrollment. That letter should be kept and put in your files. Pull your old insurance cards out of your wallet and put in the new ones. That will prevent you from showing the old cards. If you don’t receive your new cards by the first of the month, your welcome letter can be used as an insurance card. It has your ID information on it.

If you changed your insurance and it has been several weeks and you haven’t received anything in the mail from your new insurance company, you will need to check on your enrollment. A really useful tool to do this is by logging into your medicare.gov account. If you don’t have one, you can create one for yourself. By logging in you can see what Medicare coverage you have and a new enrollment status. An alternative to this is to call your new insurance company to check the status of your enrollment.

If you did not change your insurance during annual open enrollment, your current insurance product will seamlessly roll over into 2021. Your insurance may not send you new cards for the upcoming year, so you can continue to use the current insurance card you have now if you didn’t make any changes.

Good luck with your new coverage choice.

Senior Life Matters is a community based program sponsored by Lutheran Jamestown. For questions and concerns or to reach Janell Sluga, GCMC, (716) 720-9797 or e-mail SLM@lutheran-jamestown.org.