The onslaught of marketing material will begin arriving in your mailbox in September. What do you keep? What do you discard? For those of you that are enrolled in a Stand-Alone Prescription Part D plan or a Medicare Advantage Plan (MAPD), you will receive an Annual Notice of Change (ANOC) packet. The insurance company is required to send this packet to you no later than October 1st. You will want to open and review this information. Within this packet there will be detailed information of your plan for the next calendar year. If there are changes to your current plan, they will typically be listed in the beginning of the booklet.
Your packet should include a complete formulary listing for the medications that will be covered for the next year. A formulary can change from year to year. It is prudent that you compare your current list of medications to this new formulary for tier changes or deletion of medications. If there is a change, you may want to review alternative plans.
As for the MAPD plans, any changes for 2023 will be listed in the beginning of the ANOC. All services covered by this plan will be listed alphabetically throughout the remainder of the booklet. You may want to contact your provider to determine if they will remain in-network for the next calendar year. If you are enrolled in a Medicare Supplement, there typically are no changes to your plan, but you may see a rate increase at some point during the year. As a warning, all plans will automatically renew each year unless you make a change.