If you’re on Medicare, the owners of a Concord firm that specializes in the field have some advice: Open your mail.
“Most of us don’t even open the mail from insurance carriers, (we) just throw it out – ‘Oh, it’s another thing from them!’ But this week I think it’s important to tell people you need to open your mail,” said Larissa Troy, who with her husband Christian opened Woodpecker Insurance in Concord a year ago to handle New Hampshire Medicare patients.
The reason? As of Oct. 1, insurance carriers in New Hampshire must notify Medicare Advantage customers if they will see a change in their coverage, including whether they’re going to stop offering the service altogether.
It is widely expected that some of the six companies selling Medicare Advantage plans in New Hampshire have decided they can’t make enough money here and will leave the state, forcing many thousands of people to find new coverage.
“The numbers of people we’re looking at that are losing their plan is going to be a huge amount this year, far larger than last year,” said Troy. “I think insurance companies are waiting until the last hour (to announce changes.) I think they’re all going to land in the next few days.”
No matter what happens, everybody’s current Medicare Advantage plan will stay in effect through Dec. 31.
Earlier this month, New Hampshire Insurance Department Commissioner D.J. Bettencourt warned a legislative committee that the Medicare Advantage insurance market for senior citizens is “collapsing” and would leave people in rural parts of the state with few or no options next year.
“There will be more than one (company leaving) and there will be names that you recognize that pull out of the market entirely,” Bettencourt told the committee.
New Hampshire isn’t alone in facing this issue, which has been building for years and accelerated by some changes made by the Trump administration.
The open enrollment period, when it is possible to change Medicare coverage as of Jan. 1, runs from Oct. 15 to Dec. 7.
If an existing Medicare Advantage plan is dropped entirely, patients have an extended period, until the end of February, to choose and pay for a new plan. Waiting that long is risky, however, because dropped plans will end coverage as of Jan. 1, 2026, meaning that a person has no health insurance after that day, including no coverage for medication costs, until they get a new program.
Insurance agents throughout the state have been warning clients they will be swamped once open enrollment begins.
“People should do their Medicare homework now,” said Troy. “Take an inventory of your doctors, specialists, medications and have that ready now so you can shop intelligently. This is something you should be doing every September anyway, but it is especially important now.”
Medicare Advantage is the name of health insurance offered by private companies as an alternative to basic Medicare, the federal health insurance program for people over age 64. It typically offers coverage for areas not covered by Medicare, such as dental and vision coverage.
Advantage differs from Medicare Supplement insurance, or Medigap, which offers more coverage once a patient already has basic Medicare.
Choosing between those two depends on a number of factors about a patient’s health history and financial status.
For more information, check Medicare’s Plan Finder tool at www.medicare.gov or by calling 1-800-MEDICARE, or contact the state Insurance Department’s Consumer Services Unit at 603-271-2261 or consumerservices@ins.nh.gov.
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