If your plan ends, December 7 is not your deadline
Losing your coverage buys you almost three more months to choose
WHAT CHANGED?
Start with the part that takes the pressure off. If your Medicare plan is coming back next year, you do not have to do a thing. Medicare's own guidance says that people who want to keep their current coverage do not need to re-enroll.
The enrollment window everyone hears about opens Thursday, October 15 and closes December 7. There is a second window, and hardly anyone is told it exists. If your plan's contract is not being renewed for 2027, Medicare gives you a separate window that does not open until December 8, and it runs through the last day of February. You can see whether your plan is still being offered where you live in Medicare's official plan finder.
WHO IS AFFECTED?
Anyone whose plan has sent word that it will not be offered in 2027. The December 8 window was built for you, and it is a different window from the one closing December 7.
Anyone in a Medicare Advantage or Medicare drug plan who has not opened the envelope that arrived in September. One line in it says whether your plan comes back, and that line decides which window is yours.
Anyone who assumes a plan ending means no coverage at all. It does not — but what you land in by default surprises most people.
WHAT DOES IT MEAN?
Here is the distinction that matters. If your plan ends and you have not chosen another Medicare Advantage plan before it stops, Medicare moves you into Original Medicare automatically. You are not left uninsured. But Original Medicare on its own has no yearly limit on what you pay out of pocket for Part A or Part B. A ceiling exists only once you add supplemental coverage, either a Medigap policy or a Medicare Advantage plan.
This year's figures show the shape of it. A hospital stay begins with a $1,736 deductible for each benefit period, and days 61 through 90 cost $434 a day on top of that. Part B carries its own $283 deductible and a standard premium of $202.90 a month. In Original Medicare there is no figure at which any of it stops for the year.
My honest take: the danger here is not being left with nothing. It is being handed something automatically, on January 1, with no roof on it. A default is not a decision.
WHAT TO DO
Look up your own plan now, while the season is still quiet. Open Medicare's official plan finder, enter your zip code and your prescriptions, and search for your current plan by name. If it is listed for 2027, you have until December 7 to price it against everything else where you live, and keeping it takes no action at all. If it is not listed, the longer window is yours, December 8 through February 28, though leaving it to the last week of February helps nobody.
If the uncapped side of this is the part that worries you, The Medicare Cost & Coverage Protection Kit is our own $34 guide to Medicare's cost side: the drug cap, the programs that help pay, how to beat a denial, and the hospital observation trap. It carries a cost-help pack for every state.
One question for you: did your September notice say your plan is coming back for 2027, or not? Hit reply and tell me which. I read every reply, and what you tell me decides what I cover next.
Know someone who files that Medicare envelope away unopened every year? Forward this to them, or send them your personal sign-up link so they get the next one too.
SOURCE: the window Medicare gives you when a plan's contract is not renewed
Written by Ellen Marsh
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