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

Yes. The Jordan Insurance Agency is an independent agency that works with UnitedHealthcare, so our licensed agents are able to review, quote and enroll you in the UnitedHealthcare Medicare plans offered where you live. Independent means the recommendation belongs to us and not to them.

Is an AARP Medicare plan the same as a UnitedHealthcare plan?

It is, and a surprising number of people reach retirement without knowing it. AARP licenses its name to UnitedHealthcare. AARP is a membership organization; it does not insure anybody and it does not pay anybody's claims. When a Medicare plan carries AARP branding, the insurance company standing behind it is UnitedHealthcare, which is part of UnitedHealth Group. None of this is hidden, but it is easy to miss, and we have sat across the table from people convinced they had two separate arrangements running at once. Knowing whose plan it really is matters the first morning something goes wrong and you need to work out who to telephone.

Does AARP decide anything about my coverage?

No. A licensing arrangement is a branding deal and nothing more. The plan is designed, filed and administered by the insurance company, and every decision about what is offered in your county is made there. Your membership and your health coverage are two separate relationships that happen to share a name on the envelope. We raise it early for two practical reasons. It changes who you call when a claim stalls, and it settles the worry some people carry that letting a membership lapse would somehow cancel their health plan. It would not.

I have UnitedHealthcare through work. Is my Medicare plan the same thing?

No. Three different products carry this name and people blur them together constantly: coverage an employer buys for its staff, individual coverage sold on the ACA Marketplace to people under sixty-five, and Medicare coverage for people who qualify for Medicare. One company, three sets of rules, three separate calendars. The member services number changes, the appeal route changes, and above all the timing changes. If you are stepping off employer coverage into Medicare, the handover is the part that goes wrong, and it goes wrong on a specific date. We would far rather speak to you before that date than clean up afterwards. For groundwork, read what Medicare Advantage is alongside what a Medicare Supplement is.

Do you offer every UnitedHealthcare Medicare plan?

No, and no local agency does. An appointment is a contract between an agency and an insurance company, and it is narrow by design: particular products, particular places. We hold several Medicare contracts, which is a good deal more than one and a long way short of all of them. Within any single company there may be plans in your county that we are not able to offer you. The rules require a specific sentence at this point, word for word.

Read it exactly as written. It is the plainest statement available of what we are and what we are not, and we would rather lead with it than bury it at the bottom of a page.

What does your agency charge me?

Nothing, at any stage. Plan premiums are filed with the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, and the carrier pays the agent from its own side of the deal. You are quoted the filed premium whether you come through us, dial the carrier's own number, or sign yourself up on Medicare.gov unaided. There is no fee for the appointment and no charge for the help that follows it in March or in July. If the arrangement sounds too good to be true, the mechanics are explained here. The only thing we ask of you is the time.

I live on the state line. Does that complicate things?

It can, and it does so quietly. Plenty of the households we see around Charlotte have a South Carolina address and a North Carolina working life, which is the ordinary shape of things in Fort Mill, Indian Land and Lancaster County. Availability follows the county you sleep in, not the city you commute to. What a friend four miles away has may not exist on your side of the line at all, and a move across it is frequently reason enough to change a Medicare plan. So we check the address every single time, because across a short drive the answer genuinely changes.

When can I change a UnitedHealthcare Medicare plan?

Annual Enrollment is October 15 to December 7, and what you select takes effect on the first of January. Anyone already enrolled in a Medicare Advantage plan additionally gets Medicare Advantage Open Enrollment from January 1 to March 31. If you are untangling which of those applies to you and what each one allows, here is what Annual Enrollment lets you change and here is the Annual Enrollment window itself in more detail. Outside those dates you would need a Special Enrollment Period, which depends wholly on your own circumstances. Ask us before you cancel anything.

My spouse and I want different plans. Can you handle both?

Yes, and it is more common than people expect. Medicare is individual coverage, so two people in the same house can hold two different plans from two different companies without anything being wrong. What matters is that each of you is matched to your own doctors and your own medication list, which is rarely the same list twice.

Where households go astray is assuming that one decision covers both of you. A plan that suits the partner with four prescriptions and a cardiologist may be a poor fit for the one who sees a doctor once a year. We look at you separately and then check the two answers against each other, because the bills arrive in one household even when the plans do not.

How do I get started with a UnitedHealthcare Medicare review?

Pick up the telephone or ask for a call back. Our licensed agents will set out which products we can sell and which we cannot before anybody looks at anything, because that is the order the rules demand and the order that makes sense regardless. Have your Medicare card to hand, a written prescription list with doses on it, and the names of the doctors you want to keep seeing. Most reviews run under an hour, and a fair number of them end with us telling you to stay exactly where you are.