If your Medicare plan sends you a letter this fall, keep it

Colorado doesn't let you switch Medicare Supplement plans once a year. There's no birthday rule here and no anniversary window, and once your one six-month window at 65 has closed, a carrier is allowed to ask about your health and turn you down.

That's what makes the exceptions so valuable — and one of them arrives in the mail.

If a Medicare Advantage plan cancels, isn't renewed, or stops being offered in your county, everybody on it gets a guaranteed issue right. A carrier can't decline you, can't charge you more because of your medical history, and can't refuse to cover something you already have. If you've developed a health condition since 65, a right like this is the surest way back to a supplement. It isn't the only one: there are other qualifying events, and some carriers will still say yes after asking about your health.

More Coloradans than usual may get one of these letters for 2027. Two large national carriers have told investors they're cutting Advantage plans, and which counties are affected here doesn't become public until October 1.

The number almost everyone gets wrong

Look up how long you have and you'll find 63 days.

That's the right answer to a different question. Colorado's regulation actually sets two windows, and which one you're in depends on whether you left or your plan did.

If your plan ended it — canceled, not renewed, or withdrawn from your county — you have six months from the day the coverage ends.

If you leave on your own, the right isn't automatic. Simply deciding to leave an Advantage plan after a few years doesn't qualify you. You need one of the specific reasons the regulation lists, such as a trial right (below) or moving out of your plan's service area. When one applies, the window opens 60 days before your coverage ends and closes 63 days after, so you can be approved for the new policy before the old one stops.

The six months covers a Medicare Supplement policy only. A Medicare Part D drug plan has its own enrollment deadlines, so set that up separately.

Six months against 63 days isn't a rounding difference. If your plan was canceled in December and somebody tells you in March that you've missed it, they're working from the wrong half of the rule, and you actually have until roughly June.

The letter isn't paperwork about the door — it is the door

Colorado requires you to send evidence of the termination date with the application. Not on request, not afterwards. With it.

So the notice your plan mails you is the document that proves you're entitled to buy without health questions. People throw it away because it looks like every other piece of insurance mail, and then a right they still have becomes one they can't demonstrate.

Photograph it the day it arrives and send us the photograph. That's genuinely the whole task.

What you can buy, which isn't everything

A guaranteed issue right reaches a defined list rather than the full shelf. If you came to Medicare in 2020 or later, that list is Plan A, B, D, G — including the high-deductible version of G — K and L, from any carrier licensed here.

Plan N isn't on it, and that's worth knowing in advance, because N is a common landing spot in an ordinary conversation and it simply isn't available in this one. So if you'd settled on N, the door you're walking through doesn't open onto it. Plan G does, from any company, at that company's regular rate.

Two trial rights, and nothing reminds you they're closing

Neither of these involves a letter, and both of them run twelve months.

You joined Medicare Advantage when you first got Medicare. If you decide it isn't right for you, you can go back to Original Medicare within the first 12 months and buy any Medicare Supplement policy available to you in Colorado, with no health questions. There's no plan-letter list here, which makes this the widest door in the whole regulation.

You dropped a Medicare Supplement to try Advantage for the first time. You have 12 months to change your mind. You can have your old policy back if the same company still sells it; if it doesn't, you can buy certain other supplement plans with no health questions.

Both are limited to those situations. Leaving an Advantage plan after several years doesn't qualify for either. So if you started an Advantage plan last fall, put month ten in your calendar rather than month twelve — applications take time, and the deadline doesn't care that yours is in the mail.

One more trigger, and the sequence matters

Moving out of your plan's service area is on the list too. Which window applies depends on whether the plan ends your enrollment or you do, so it's worth calling before you move rather than after. That sequence is inside your control, and it decides which of the two clocks you're on.

What to do with all this

If anything arrives from your Medicare plan between now and December, open it, keep it, and tell us the date on it. We'll work out which window you're in and whether a door is open — and we'll say so plainly if the answer is that staying put is your better option.

No charge, no obligation, and a licensed advisor rather than a call center.