What should I review before Medicare Annual Enrollment closes?

The dates

• September — your Annual Notice of Change arrives
• October 15 — Annual Enrollment opens
• December 7 — Annual Enrollment closes. The plan must have your request by this date.
• January 1 — any change takes effect

Gather first

Ten minutes here makes everything after it straightforward.

• Your Annual Notice of Change. The September letter listing what is different next year.
• Every medication with exact dosage and how often you take it.
• Every doctor and the hospital you intend to keep using.
• Your pharmacy, since preferred and standard networks price differently.
• Your current plan name and member ID.

The three checks

1. Are your medications still covered, at the same tier? Check each one against next year's formulary. Watch for a tier change, a new prior authorization requirement, or a drug removed entirely. This is the most expensive change that can happen and the least visible.

2. Are your doctors and hospital still in network? For next year, not this year. Networks are published by plan year. A physician group leaving is common and is rarely communicated directly.

3. Did the costs move? Compare next year's premium, deductible and copays against what you pay now. A steady premium can hide a meaningful copay change.

Three clean answers and staying put is a good decision made deliberately. Detail on each is in why did my Medicare plan change for next year.

The Part D numbers for 2027

No plan may charge a drug deductible above $700 in 2027, and some charge none. Once your out-of-pocket spending on covered Part D drugs reaches $2,400, you pay nothing more for covered Part D drugs that calendar year.

If something needs changing

You have until December 7, and the list of what you can change is broad: join, drop or switch a Medicare Advantage plan, add or drop drug coverage, move between Original Medicare and Advantage, or change Part D plans. The full list is in what you can change during Annual Enrollment.

The one thing Annual Enrollment does not cover is buying a Medicare Supplement without health questions. If your plan involves leaving Medicare Advantage for Original Medicare plus a Supplement, get the Supplement approved before dropping anything.

Compare on the right number

Not the monthly premium. Total annual cost: twelve months of premium, plus the deductible, plus what your specific medications will actually cost at your specific pharmacy across the year.

A zero-premium plan that places one of your drugs on a high tier can cost more over twelve months than a plan charging forty dollars a month. The method is in how to compare Medicare Part D drug plans.

Before January

• Refill prescriptions in late December if you changed carriers, since prior authorizations generally do not transfer
• Finish care already underway while this year's totals still count
• Watch for your new member ID card
• Ask your pharmacy to run a test claim in early January to confirm coverage is live

Why the September letter is the whole job

Almost everything on this checklist traces back to one document. The Annual Notice of Change tells you what your carrier altered for next year, and it is the only place that information appears in one piece.

It arrives in an envelope that looks like marketing, alongside the much longer Evidence of Coverage. Most people file both and never open either. By the time Annual Enrollment opens on October 15, the notice has usually gone.

If you do one thing this autumn, put that envelope somewhere you will see it again in late October.

What good and bad answers look like

A good year: premium moved a few dollars, every medication is on the same tier, your doctors are still listed, your pharmacy is still preferred. Do nothing. That is a real decision and you have made it.

A year that needs attention: a medication moved up a tier or picked up prior authorization, a physician group left the network, the deductible rose meaningfully, or the plan was discontinued and you were mapped into a replacement you did not choose.

Any one of those is worth twenty minutes of comparison before December 7.

If you are helping a parent

This is often how it goes: an adult child notices a pharmacy bill jumped in January and starts asking questions.

The useful move in October is simple. Ask whether the September letter arrived, find it, and check their medication list against it. You do not need to understand Medicare to do that, and it catches most problems before they start.

One thing this checklist does not cover

Medicare Supplement policies sit outside Annual Enrollment entirely. You can apply in any month, but outside limited circumstances an insurer may ask health questions and may decline you.

So if your review leads you toward leaving Medicare Advantage for Original Medicare plus a Supplement, the order matters: get the Supplement approved first, then make the change. Reversing it is the most consequential mistake available in Medicare.

A realistic timeline

Spread across six weeks rather than crammed into one evening, this is comfortable.

Late September: the Annual Notice of Change arrives. Open it, glance at it, keep it somewhere visible.

Mid October: write down your medications with dosages, your doctors, and your pharmacy. Ten minutes.

Late October, once Annual Enrollment has opened: run the three checks. Next year's plan details are published by then.

Mid November: if something needs changing, make the change. There is no advantage to waiting.

December 7: hard deadline. The plan must have your request.

The households that find this stressful are the ones doing all of it in the first week of December. The work is the same; the margin for error is not.

Questions worth asking about any plan you are considering

• Is every one of my medications on the formulary, and at what tier?
• Does any of them need prior authorization or step therapy?
• Is my pharmacy in the preferred network, or only the standard one?
• Are my doctors and my hospital both in network for next year?
• What is the maximum out-of-pocket, and could I realistically reach it?
• What does this cost across twelve months, not per month?

Any one of these can reverse a decision that looked obvious on premium alone.

How The Jordan Insurance Agency helps

The Jordan Insurance Agency is an independent agency in Charlotte, North Carolina. Give us your medication list, your doctors and your pharmacy, and we will run the three checks and tell you plainly whether anything is worth acting on.

Frequently the answer is that your plan still fits, and we will say so. There is no cost, and your premium is the same whether you review with us or on your own.