Can The Jordan Insurance Agency help me with a Humana Medicare plan?

Yes. The Jordan Insurance Agency is an independent agency that works with Humana, and our licensed agents can review, quote and enroll you in the Humana Medicare plans offered at your address. We are not a Humana office and we do not work for Humana.

Did Humana start out as an insurance company?

It did not. Humana was founded in 1961 in Louisville, Kentucky as a nursing-home business. Hospitals came next, and insurance came after that. The history is trivia rather than a reason to buy anything, but it goes some way to explaining why the name has been familiar across the South for so long, and why so many households in the Carolinas have had a Humana card sitting in a kitchen drawer for a very long time. Familiarity is a comfortable thing. It is also the reason a great many people have never once questioned what they are holding.

I have had my Humana plan for six years. Is there really anything to review?

Yes, and it is the most useful idea on this page. A Medicare Advantage or Part D plan is refiled with the government every single year. Hold one for six years and you have not held one plan for six years. You have held six annual versions of it, each one a little different from the one before. Hardly anybody reads the notice that sets out those differences, which is understandable, because it lands in the autumn alongside everything else in the post. Then one February a pharmacy counter or a receptionist delivers the news instead. Going through the Annual Notice of Change is dull, unglamorous work. It is also what prevents most of the unpleasant surprises we get called about.

What exactly should I be checking each year?

Three things, in roughly this order. Whether the doctors you intend to keep still take the plan. Whether every medication on your list, at the dose you genuinely take, is still treated the way it was last year. And whether anything in your own life has shifted, such as a move, a new diagnosis or a spouse finishing work, that makes a different shape of coverage sensible. We work through that with you rather than posting you a document and wishing you luck. If you spend part of the year away, we will also look at how your coverage behaves when you travel, which regularly catches out people with grandchildren in another state. None of this asks you to become an expert in any of it. It asks that somebody competent looks at it once a year on your behalf, and that the looking happens before the window shuts rather than after.

Do you offer every Humana Medicare plan?

No. We hold Medicare contracts with a number of organizations, and a contract covers certain products in certain places and no more. There will be plans we cannot bring to you, including some belonging to companies we already work with. You should hear that from us in the first five minutes rather than piece it together later. Here is the sentence the rules require us to display.

If the right answer for you sits outside what we are able to sell, we will say so, tell you why, and tell you where to look instead.

Does using your agency cost me anything?

No. Premiums are filed with the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, and the filed figure is what you pay regardless of who handles the enrollment. The carrier compensates the agent, so you are never billed, surcharged or marked up for the help. The conversation carries no cost either, including the ones that end with you deciding to do nothing at all. We field this question most often in Middle Tennessee, where the county-by-county patchwork means people have usually taken several calls from strangers before they ever reach us.

What should I bring to a Humana plan review?

Your red, white and blue Medicare card. Your current plan card, if you have one. The Annual Notice of Change if it has arrived. A written medication list with the doses on it rather than a rough memory of them. And the names of the doctors and the pharmacy you want to keep. That is the whole list. A review takes about an hour at our Charlotte office or our Nashville office, and it works perfectly well by telephone when driving is a nuisance. If you want to know what you ought to be asking while you are there, here is how to choose a Medicare agent.

When am I allowed to change a Humana plan?

Annual Enrollment, October 15 to December 7, with the change taking effect on January 1. If you are already enrolled in a Medicare Advantage plan, Medicare Advantage Open Enrollment gives you January 1 to March 31 as well, and the two are not interchangeable. Outside those dates you need a qualifying event, such as a move or the loss of other coverage, and what counts as a Special Enrollment Period is narrower than most people assume it is. Ask somebody before you cancel anything, because an enrollment undone is much harder than an enrollment delayed.

What if Humana stops offering my plan where I live?

Then a letter arrives, generally in the autumn, and you get a window in which to choose something else. Carriers adjust their footprints every year, counties come and counties go, and it happens across the industry rather than at one company. A non-renewal letter is not an emergency, but it is a deadline, and ignoring it is how people end up somewhere nobody chose on purpose. Bring it to us. It is also the simplest moment to be changing a Medicare plan, because the door is already open and the clock is already running.