Your one do-over if you picked the wrong Advantage plan

Most people know about Annual Enrollment each autumn, October 15 to December 7. Rather fewer know there's a second window in the new year, and it was built for exactly one situation: you picked a Medicare Advantage plan, you started actually using it, and it turned out to be the wrong one.

The window

Medicare Advantage Open Enrollment runs January 1 through March 31, every year.

If you're enrolled in a Medicare Advantage plan on January 1, you get one switch during it — one — and you can either move to a different Advantage plan or go back to Original Medicare and add a standalone Part D plan.

There are two things it doesn't do. It isn't available if you're already on Original Medicare, and it won't let you move from a Medigap policy into an Advantage plan.

The catch on the way back

Leaving Advantage for Original Medicare is the easy half. The half that catches people is the Medigap policy you'd want alongside it.

Federal law protects you in two specific trial-right situations. The first is if this is the very first Medicare Advantage plan you ever joined, taken when you first became eligible, and you switch back within your first twelve months. The second is if you dropped a Medigap policy specifically to try Advantage for the first time, you've been on it under twelve months, and you want your old policy back.

Outside those two, applying for a new Medigap policy in Colorado usually means answering health questions, because this state has no birthday rule and no annual guaranteed-issue window. People tend to discover that at the moment their health has changed, which is exactly the moment it bites hardest.

When it's the right tool

Your plan's network changed. A doctor you rely on left it. The drug you take moved to a different tier. The plan works fine on paper and badly in practice.

Those are all good reasons, and the window exists for them.

What to sort out first

Think about what you're switching to, rather than only what you're switching away from. Is a Medigap policy realistically available to you, and at what rate? Would a different Advantage plan solve the actual problem? Sometimes the answer is the same carrier and a different network tier.

You only get one switch a year, so twenty minutes of thinking before you spend it is a good trade. Call us with your plan name and whatever went wrong, and we'll work through it with you.