Applying for Medicare these days is simple. I know that dealing with anything involving the government brings up visions of spending hours waiting (think of your experience at the DMV) and wasted days.
But these days applying for Medicare is easy and can be done online.
First of all, let’s talk about the information you will need.
Your date of birth: You have to be 65 to enroll in Medicare, and according to the Medicare website you can started enrolling online at 64 years and 8 months.
Marital status: Medicare needs to know this because your combined income could vary the monthly premiums you have to pay. As an example, your maximum Medicare Part B premium is $115.40 if you are single making less than $85,000 a year or married making less than $170,000.
Employment status: You will be asked your employment status because Medicare has special rules for the beneficiaries of enrollees if they currently have health insurance from their employer.
Apply online: Go the Medicare enrollment website and fill out the application. It takes on average about 15 minutes. However, if this is a little intimidating for you the other option is to call 1-800-772-1213 (TTY 1-800-325-0778) between 7am and 7pm business days and they will take you through the process of applying for Medicare.
When you do apply for Medicare initially, you will be applying for Medicare Part A (hospitalization), which is free, and Medicare Part B, which covers doctor’s visitors. It will typically cover 80% of the costs for a doctor’s visit. You can find out more about the premium here.
To cover the remaining 20% of the cost of a doctor’s visit, you will either have to pay it out-of-pocket, have a doctor that takes assignment (a fancy term meaning, in essence, that they accept the 80% from Medicare and don’t charge you the 20%) or buy a private Medicare Supplemental Insurance Plan, which will pay the remaining 20%. You will have to pay an additional monthly premium for the Medicare Supplemental Insurance Plan.
One other plan that is not covered in this initial setup is Medicare Part D, the Prescription Drug coverage and will also require an additional premium of you choose to own this policy.
