 The Medicare Open Enrollment Period begins on October 15th and closes on December 7th. It's your only chance this year to switch plans or make other changes. I talked with Carol Rankort, a Medicare educator for the Southern Maine Agency on Aging, about the importance of reviewing your coverage every year. Thanks for joining us, Carol. Nice to be here. Thanks for having me. We have something very exciting to talk about. Maybe not as exciting as important because it's coming right up around the corner of the Medicare Open Enrollment. That's right. A Medicare Open Enrollment for the past two years has started on October 15th, so it's just around the corner, and it continues up through December 7th. So that's the window that people have to check their coverage and make any changes without facing penalties. And this is for people who are 65 or older, so people who are just 65 for the first time this year really need to pay attention. Right. And anybody who's above 65 who's been on Medicare, there are some significant changes in the Part D side especially, so they're going to want to look at their plans this year. What is Medicare Part D about? Part D is D for drugs. So it's all your prescriptions, whether they be brand name or generic, are covered by the Part D plans. And you were mentioning before one of the big changes is a huge increase. Is that correct? Yes. This year in Maine there are going to again be 28 plans just like last year, but this year out of the 10 most popular plans, seven of them are increasing their premiums. And we're talking double digit increases. The increases range between 11% and 23%. So that's a significant change. And when I said the more popular plans, for example, last year our least expensive plan was Humana Wal-Mart, which was at $15.50 this year, 2013 I should say. It's going to $18.50. That's only a $3 increase. But percentage wise that's significant. Some of the others like Cigna and a number of others are jumping even higher than that. So that's a significant factor for people because you're paying that increase 12 times a year. It's a monthly premium. And so that can significantly add to your costs. Now the difference between the plans, is it just costs and premiums? So other things people need to look at, of course, is are all of my drugs still on the formulary of the plan and are the drugs that I'm taking at the lowest tier possible with the plan I'm choosing? And when you have the lower the tier, the least cost you. So you want to keep, hopefully, as many of your drugs as possible in tier one or tier two rather than tier three, four, five or higher because those drugs are going to cost you more. So it's always good to look every year to make sure with your current plan where it's going to be in the following year. So irrespective of the rate increases, I would recommend that people look, at least do a cursory look every year to make sure their drugs are on the formulary and in a tier they can afford. The one saving grace for people that started last year is that there are now designated by the federal government five-star plans. And if your state has a five-star plan, you can change to that plan anytime through the year. So you kind of have a safety valve if something catastrophic happens in the middle of the year. We don't know yet. They will let us know actually on October 14 what the five-star plans are. So last year we did not have any five-star deep lands. We did have two five-star Medicare Advantage plans. So Mainers did have a safety valve if they needed to move. And real quickly, if somebody doesn't make it within the open enrollment period, what's the consequences? They're stuck for one calendar year. The changes happen starting each January 1st. So when they go to the pharmacy if they haven't checked and they happen to be in a plan that has a 23% increase or maybe one of their drugs is no longer covered, there's not much they can do about it for a whole calendar year unless they move to a five-star plan. The small offer on the kind of advice on how do people contact them. You can certainly stop at our office at 136 Route 1 in Scarborough anytime. We do have a Medicare mailbox number for phone calls because we always get a lot of phone calls this time of the year. And that's 207-396-6524. And you may get a live person, but when the phone's back up, you'll be popped into the mailbox, but you will get a call within a day or two to set an appointment for you to review your Medicare information. Great. Well, it's really helpful for Simano off of that service. It is, and it's a busy time of the year. Thank you very much for joining us. You're welcome.