Can The Jordan Insurance Agency help me with an Aetna Medicare plan?

Yes. The Jordan Insurance Agency is an independent agency that works with Aetna, which means our licensed agents can explain, quote and enroll you in the Aetna Medicare plans offered where you live. Independent also means we are not an Aetna office, and nobody here is paid to push you toward one company over another.

Does CVS owning Aetna change my Medicare plan?

This is the first thing people ask us, and the honest answer is that it should not change how you pick a plan. Aetna was founded in 1853 in Hartford, Connecticut, and spent more than 170 years building a book of business before CVS Health acquired it in 2018. Ownership is a fact about the company. It is not a fact about your coverage. What decides whether an Aetna plan suits you is whether the doctors you intend to keep and the medications you actually take line up with what that plan does, and the answer shifts from one address to the next. We check it against your address rather than against a brochure.

Is the Aetna plan I had at work the same as an Aetna Medicare plan?

No, and this catches more people than you would expect. The Aetna card you carried through an employer belonged to a group plan your employer bought and could change at will. An Aetna Medicare plan is a separate product, filed with the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, running on its own annual cycle with its own rules and its own appeals process. The name on the card is identical. Almost nothing behind it is. If you are retiring and quietly assuming your coverage carries on under the same company, that assumption deserves testing before your employer coverage ends rather than after. Part of that first conversation is working out which category you are actually in, and we will cover what Medicare Advantage is if the territory is new to you.

Do you offer every Aetna Medicare plan?

No. We hold contracts with several Medicare organizations, and a contract is specific about which products an agency may sell and where. Even inside one company there can be plans in your county that we are not able to put in front of you. Anyone promising to show you everything on the market is either confused or not being straight with you. The Medicare marketing rules require us to say this in one particular way, so here it is.

That sentence is not a formality we resent. If the plan that suits you happens to be one we cannot sell, we will tell you so and point you at Medicare.gov. Losing a sale is a smaller problem than putting somebody in the wrong place.

What does it cost to use The Jordan Insurance Agency?

Nothing. Medicare plan premiums are filed with the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, and the filed price is the price whether you enroll through an agent, over the phone with the carrier, or by yourself online. The carrier compensates the agent out of its own side of the arrangement. There is no agent fee, no service charge and no markup anywhere in it. People find that genuinely hard to believe, which is why we wrote a longer explanation of whether a Medicare broker costs more. The practical upshot is that working with someone local costs you an hour and nothing else.

What happens when your agents review an Aetna plan with me?

We start from your list rather than from a plan. The doctors you see, the pharmacy you use, the medications you take and the doses you take them at. Then we look at what exists at your address across the companies we are able to sell, Aetna among them, and we tell you what we find. Sometimes the finding is that the plan you already hold is the sensible one and you should leave it alone. That is a real result and we say it out loud when it is true. If you are still weighing structures rather than companies, we will walk through Medicare Advantage set beside a Medicare Supplement first, because that choice comes before the question of whose name is on the card.

When can I move into or out of an Aetna Medicare plan?

Medicare Annual Enrollment runs October 15 through December 7, and whatever you choose in that window begins on January 1. If you are already enrolled in a Medicare Advantage plan you also get Medicare Advantage Open Enrollment, January 1 through March 31. That second window belongs only to people already in a Medicare Advantage plan, and it does not permit everything Annual Enrollment permits, which is why the two windows are worth telling apart. Outside both, a Special Enrollment Period can open when your circumstances change. Those turn on your situation and your address, so we check instead of guessing.

What happens if my Aetna plan is not offered next year?

Footprints move. Companies add counties, drop counties and sometimes retire a plan entirely, and when that happens a letter reaches you in the autumn saying so. It is not a crisis and it is not a reason to grab the first thing offered to you over the telephone. Bring the letter in. A non-renewal usually opens a window to choose something else deliberately, and it is a natural moment to look again at your drug coverage, which is where how Part D works earns its keep.

How do I get help with an Aetna Medicare plan near Charlotte?

Call our Charlotte office or ask for a call back at a time that suits you, and we will tell you what we can sell, what we cannot, and what we would do if we were sitting in your chair. If you would rather read something first, start with how to choose a Medicare agent, including the questions you ought to be asking us. Bring your Medicare card, a written medication list and the names of your doctors. An hour usually settles the whole thing.