For most people on Medicare, the chance to change coverage comes just once a year, and that window opens October 15 and closes December 7. During those weeks, enrollees can switch, join, or drop a Medicare Advantage plan or a Part D drug plan, and any change made takes effect January 1. Missing the deadline…

Millions of Medicare enrollees pay their Part B premium out of pocket every month without realizing a state program could cover it for them. Medicare Savings Programs are designed to do exactly that for people with limited income, yet they remain one of the most under-claimed forms of help in the Medicare system. For a…

Losing a Medicare Advantage plan is unsettling, but it can also unlock a protection that is otherwise hard to get. Federal rules give people whose Advantage coverage ends through no fault of their own a limited window to buy a Medigap policy without a health screening. That window is time-sensitive, and enrollees who do not…

The blockbuster weight-loss drugs that many households could not afford are getting markedly cheaper under a pricing arrangement between the federal government and the two companies that make them. Starting-dose versions of drugs like Wegovy, Zepbound, and the Ozempic class are being sold for about $350 a month in cash, and Medicare enrollees are looking…

For most older Americans, the hospital and doctors they trust are only “in network” because of the specific Medicare plan in their wallet. That link is fraying. A running industry tally now counts 25 health systems that have dropped, ended, or narrowed their Medicare Advantage contracts so far in 2026, and the number keeps climbing…

One of the most valuable Medicare benefits is also one of the most overlooked: a program called Extra Help that can erase most of what lower-income enrollees pay for prescription drugs. It can wipe out the Part D drug-plan premium and deductible and cut copays to a few dollars per prescription. Yet many people who…

A Trump executive order is pushing to tie what Medicare pays for certain prescription drugs to the lower prices that other wealthy countries pay for the same medicines. The idea, often called “most favored nation” pricing, is that the United States should not pay several times what Germany or Canada pays for an identical drug.…

The standard Medicare Part B premium, which most beneficiaries have deducted straight from their Social Security checks, is projected to rise to about $209.50 a month in 2027. That is an estimate drawn from the Medicare trustees’ own numbers, not the official rate — that lands in November — but it gives retirees a realistic…

Humana has told investors it will pull out of Medicare Advantage plans that cover roughly 600,000 members for the 2027 plan year, and it expects to move only about four in ten of those people into another plan it still sells. For everyone else, the plan they use today simply will not exist in January,…

The document at the center of this change is an ordinary one: a signed written order that has to reach the equipment supplier before the item is delivered, supported by a face-to-face visit with the treating practitioner in the six months before that order was written. On October 28, 2026, twenty-two more equipment codes come…