HOW TO ENROLL IN MEDICARE

Enrollment

Medicare is part of Social Security. In general, you must be 65 or older to enroll in Medicare, so if you took early retirement, you generally must wait until you are 65 to get Medicare. To enroll in Medicare, you have 2 options:

* Call Social Security toll-free at 800-772-1213. (TTY users call 800-325-0778).
* Go to the Social Security website for contact information. Note however that you cannot apply for Medicare online. You can click here for the Social Security website.

Eligibility and Early/Late Retirement

In general, you are only eligible for Medicare when you turn 65, even if for some reason you are not also eligible for Social Security. By this same token, you may be eligible for Social Security but not for Medicare.

For example, if you take early retirement and begin receiving Social Security before age 65, you probably won’t be eligible for Medicare until you turn 65. So make sure you have health insurance coverage until then!

By the same token, if you are still working full time past age 65 and are covered by a qualified employer or union health plan, you may not need to enroll in Medicare until you actually retire.

That is, you can apply for Social Security at 65 regardless of your work status. When you do, you are automatically enrolled in Medicare Part A (which is free). However, if your work health plan provides for major medical and prescription drug coverage, there may be no reason for you to get this coverage through Medicare until you actually retire.

But remember that, whether you retire at 65 or later, when you do retire you have only 63 days to apply for Medicare if you want to avoid paying a penalty on your premiums.

The Medicare website let’s you check your eligibility, although the actual enrollment is through Social Security. To see if you are eligible, you can click here for the Medicare Eligibility website.

NAVIGATION:

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