Open enrollment refers to changing from one Advantage plan to another. Most areas have many, competing.
Perhaps so. I would not touch Advantage at all if only because of the advertisements.
Without underwriting and acceptance we are stuck with the Medigap coverage we choose upon initial enrollment for the rest of my life. The caveat to that is failure of the company you initially pick. There is no fully “open” enrollment for Medigap.
I chose G with community based premiums that will go up with inflation but not for age. The only such plan offered in our state is via hated AARP and UnitedHealthCare. I considered Mutual of Omaha favorably but the only pricing available in our state is attained age based which provides a scale that gets pretty sporty pretty quickly plus inflation. People I have talked to are satisfied with United but people on this forum are variously disparaging of it though some seem to be mixing regular and Medigap coverages in comments about experience.
I have had BCBS for years as I paid through the nose for nothing but catastrophic coverage under barky care. I hate them and am willing and wanting to go somewhere else. They are administratively buffoons. Maybe something else is worse but I doubt it. Right now all of them are cluster flucks what with the entire nation trying to do all this crap in a two month period. What fool ever thought that was a good idea?
I’ll add that the commercials are intentionally vague about that.
I’ll also add that the Medigap carriers could make things very easy on themselves and us by simply providing a notice by any of several modes that:
“Your plan has been renewed for the next year. It will remain in force so long as you pay the new premium. You only need to contact us if you want to make changes to your current plan.”
Operators have told me that this one simple subject is what clogs the system and is the issue in most of the calls they are answering right now. It is the only reason I called since I could find absolutely no statement to that effect by mail, by e-mail or on my account web page.