Can The Jordan Insurance Agency help me with a Blue Cross Blue Shield of South Carolina Medicare plan?

The hardest part of Medicare in this corner of South Carolina has very little to do with insurance. It is working out which county you live in, and getting that wrong undoes everything that follows.

Can The Jordan Insurance Agency help me with a Blue Cross Blue Shield of South Carolina Medicare plan?

Yes. The Jordan Insurance Agency is an independent agency that works with Blue Cross Blue Shield of South Carolina, and we are licensed in South Carolina to do it. We review that company's Medicare products against the address you live at, explain in plain words what you would be signing up for, and submit the enrollment when you say go. Appointments with several Medicare organizations sit behind that conversation, which means nobody here is steering you toward a single predetermined answer.

My mail says Fort Mill but I work in Charlotte. Whose Blue Cross is mine?

Whichever one serves the county you sleep in. Plan availability follows residence and nothing else. A Fort Mill mailing address attached to a Charlotte office, a North Carolina bank and a North Carolina accountant still points at York County, South Carolina, and York County is what Medicare looks at. Your commute carries no weight. Neither does your employer's address, nor the branch where your paycheck lands. Where the postal service chooses to route your letters does not always settle it either, which brings up the next problem.

Why does Indian Land trip so many people up?

Because the mail carrier and the county assessor disagree. A great many homes in the Indian Land area carry Fort Mill addresses while sitting in Lancaster County rather than York. Two households a few minutes apart can have near-identical envelopes and entirely different Medicare menus, because the county beneath them is not the same. We run into this every fall. It is the single most common reason a quote somebody was given over the phone turns out not to apply to them at all. Before we talk about products, we pin down the county, and we do it from the property, not the postmark.

Are the South Carolina and North Carolina Blue Cross plans run by one organization?

No. Blue Cross Blue Shield of South Carolina is a South Carolina company, separate from the Blue Cross plans in other states. Crossing the state line changes the company, not merely the county. Anyone who moved down from Charlotte and kept the habit of calling the number printed on an older card is calling a different organization about products it does not sell where they now live. The brand made the trip. The company stayed where it was. Along this border that distinction is not trivia, it is the whole thing.

Do you offer every Blue Cross Blue Shield of South Carolina Medicare plan?

No. Our appointments cover a set of Medicare organizations rather than all of them, and inside each one we can only present what the appointment allows. Claiming otherwise would make the first five minutes of our conversation untrue, which is a poor way to begin a relationship that is supposed to last years. If you want the complete inventory for your county, Medicare.gov and the 1-800-MEDICARE line will give it to you, and we are glad to sit and look through it alongside you.

Does working with a licensed agent cost me anything?

Not a cent. Premiums are set in filings made with the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, and the carrier compensates the agent from its own pocket. You pay exactly the same figure whether you handle the whole thing alone or let us handle it for you. That still surprises people, so we raise it early rather than letting it sit there as an unasked question. Whether a Medicare broker costs more takes the question apart in full.

What are the dates, and which ones apply to me?

Medicare Annual Enrollment runs October 15 through December 7, and coverage chosen then begins January 1. Anybody on Medicare can use it. Medicare Advantage Open Enrollment runs January 1 through March 31 and is limited to people already enrolled in a Medicare Advantage plan, so if you are not in one it is simply not your window. We set the two beside each other in Annual Enrollment versus Medicare Advantage Open Enrollment. Outside both, a Special Enrollment Period can open after certain life events, and moving across a state line is one of them, which in this corner of the map happens far more often than you might guess. Special Enrollment Periods covers who qualifies and how long the door stays open.

I am not sure Medicare Advantage is even what I want. Can we start there?

Please do. A lot of people arrive asking about one named company when the real question sits a level above it, which is what kind of coverage they want in the first place. What Medicare Advantage is gives you the plain version with no sales varnish on it. And whether you can change your Medicare plan addresses the quiet fear that one decision chains you to a company forever. Usually it does not, and knowing that takes most of the pressure out of a first conversation.

What does a review with your agency actually involve?

Fifteen minutes of dull questions followed by a straight answer. We confirm the county from the property address. We take your prescriptions with doses written down rather than remembered, and your doctors by name rather than by practice. We look at what is filed for that address this year. Then we tell you what we see, which includes telling you when what you already hold is fine and the sensible move is no move at all. An agent who cannot say that out loud is not much use to anybody. If a plan is being non-renewed for the coming year the carrier will send notice during the fall, and the letter reads like bad news when it is usually just a deadline. Bring it in and we will work out what it means while there is still room to act on it.