If you buy a Medicare application during the months of October, November and December, you should not be surprised that Medicare adds underwriting and processing time, taking 6–9 weeks. If you count an additional 2-3 weeks to get your IDs after you have been approved, it can be a 3-month process from the time you submit your application for review.
During the first 3 quarters of the year, Medicare recipients can count on a normal underwriting time in the 2-3 week range, with another 1-2 weeks to get your ID cards. Thus, it is unrealistic that you could expect to apply during the first week of the month and have your identity card before the expiration of this month.
So what causes this tripling in the time it takes to complete an underwriting? The short answer is: many people apply for insurance during this period due to various circumstances.
Here are the main contributors to delay.
Among other things, the main situations that cause so many people to apply for coverage during this period include:
1) People who have lost employer-sponsored health insurance - Many Medicare recipients decide to retire at the end of the year and apply for Medicare value-added insurance to start on January 1 of the next year, as their employer-based insurance expires on December 31. Unfortunately, a more recent and more ordinary person who fits into this category is a Medicare recipient who loses retirement insurance coverage, which their former employer promised to cover the rest of their lives (recent legislation allowed companies to refuse this coverage). This group of people represents over a million Medicare recipients, and they can start applying for coverage on October 1st.
2) People lose Medicare Advantage plans “A recent trend has shown that many Medicare Advantage companies are no longer offering their plans in different regions or states or even all of them together. Part of Obama's national health plan is to pay for the program by taking money with Medicare. His focus was on reducing the subsidies (amounts of money) paid to private insurance companies that manage these Medicare Advantage plans, and using this money to fund national health care. Consequently, many Medicare Advantage companies understand that they cannot be profitable and therefore decide not to offer their plans anymore. Around September, they usually send letters that set out the current members of the plan that they will be covered by the plan as of January 1 of the following year. Over the past couple of years, this group of people has been close to or just over a million people, and they can apply for October 1st.
3) People wanting to get out of their Medicare Advantage plans - This group of people uses the Medicare Advantage plan and does not lose coverage, but is usually not satisfied with the coverage provided and returns to regular Medicare and applies for Medicare. People in this category usually represent a few hundred thousand disgruntled members of Medicare Advantage, and they are eligible to apply for coverage starting November 15.
4) General confusion about what time of the year you can switch the Medicare app. “With the different enrollment periods introduced with the deployment of Medicare Part D and Medicare Advantage plans, there was a lot of confusion as to when the holder of the Medicare supplement plan can switch Medicare. The reality is that the holder of an extra Medicare insurance plan can switch his plan at any time during the year. This type of plan is not subject to different registration periods. However, a Medicare insurance premium usually needs to undergo a medical check up for a new plan to switch. This group of people believes that they can only claim new coverage in the 4th quarter of the year by enterprises for a few hundred more people.
So, if you add all of this, you have potential millions of Medicare recipients who can only apply for coverage, or they think they can only apply for coverage in the 4th quarter of the year.
The bottom line is that if you fit into one of the categories that allows you to submit an application before November 15, it would be in your best interest to submit an application as soon as you decide which plan you would like to go with. Monthly waiting for completion of underwriting and your receipt of cards. Someone applying at the end of November may not see their ID cards until February, even if they ask to start on January 1.
