I was recently asked a great question from John. He asked, “Am I required to take the retirement Medicare plan that my retirement package my company offers?”
This is such a good question, so I want to clarify this so you know what to do instead of assuming what you should or should not do.
Whether you work as a teacher, or for an airline, or for whatever company it might be, many of the retirement program packages include Medicare options.
To answer John’s question, and to anyone who is offered Medicare options in their retirement package, no, you’re not required to take that Medicare plan.
However, you will want to make sure of a few things if you opt-out of the retirement health care package, like making sure that doesn’t result in you opting out of anything else. Like a life insurance policy, a long-term care policy, or anything else of that nature. With that said, most of them don’t have these requirements but be sure you double-check.
Now that you know you don’t have to accept your retiree plan, there are two things I want to talk about with retiree plans and what you need to look for.
First off is to look at your plan options. It’s always important to know what your options are – between your retiree plan and Medicare. And that way you can decide which one does fit you best.
I will say we’ve probably seen hundreds of different retirement plans, from teacher plans to government employee plans to airline plans, and I would say about half of them are good. While the other half of them are not better than Medicare.
I’ll say again, half the times, we recommend Medicare, and the other half of the times, we recommend that you stay on your retirement plan.
That means, just because you have a retiree plan, don’t assume that it’s the best for you. Be sure to do that research and confirm what makes the most sense.
You will want to compare:
- Your out-of-pocket costs.
- Your deductibles.
- If your medications will be covered.
- Your doctors.
- Your networks.
Secondly, and this is critical, I want you to know that some of these retirement programs automatically enroll you when you turn 65, whether you opt-in or opt-out. And I get a little nervous about that because I just mentioned that about 50% of retirement plans are good, and the other 50% are not great. I don’t love that they will automatically enroll people.
So before you turn 65, look to see 1, what your retirement program is that’s being offered and 2, are they going to auto-enroll you in that program or not. Again, because of insurability rules, you might not be able to undo it.
I want you to be very strategic and very specific on the actions that you take to ensure that the program that you’re picking for Medicare is what’s truly best for your healthcare conditions and your retirement plan overall.
To easily make the right Medicare decision you can CLICK HERE to sign up for our Medicare Enrollment Concierge.
