Say there is a person, age 64 1/2, who wants to retire. He has a wife a year younger who is self-employed. He has good insurance and she is covered under it.
I know he can get covered under COBRA for 18 months or so, which is a better alternative than getting insurance from an exchange, because of doctor coverage. Money is not that much of an object. If it were just him, he could get COBRA until age 65, and drop it for Medicare.
My question is can she stay covered until she reaches 65 without him staying covered under COBRA. If not, are there issues with waiting until 66 for Medicare in terms of supplemental coverage?
I’ve looked at site explaining COBRA, but this is way too weird a question to be covered.
From a Medicare perspective, COBRA and employer provided coverage are the same - except you pay for it.
She stays on COBRA for 18 months until 65 then switches. He has 6 months of full COBRA, then a year of mixed coverage. COBRA premium might decrease for the final 12 months.
Just treat this as “What do I do about Medicare if I stay employed with insurance after 65?”.
I’m going off memory here, so I may be wrong. Someone else will have to chime in (or you can search on the Medicare website to see if you can find an answer). But…
IIRC, if you don’t enroll in Medicare when you are 65, then you can only enroll during a general enrollment period, which happens at the beginning of every year, and there is a lag between when you enroll and when coverage actually starts. Plus, IIRC, there’s some kind of penalty for waiting to enroll (but I can’t remember).
There is a special enrollment period, but (again IIRC) natural expiration of COBRA benefits doesn’t qualify for special enrollment. So, I would advise your friend to research the issue of waiting to enroll in Medicare after he turns 65 very thoroughly, because if he’s not spot-on, he may be subject to a break in coverage or a penalty.
If I have time later this weekend, I’ll see if I can find out if my recollection is correct. But the issue of whether or not to enroll in Medicare at 65 is one that he needs to investigate thoroughly before making a decision.
He should contact his HR department (although HR departments are often wrong) and call up Medicare. He might also want to try AARP.
IIRC, while you must register for Medicare at 65, you are not required to use it at 65. So you and your wife could stay with your COBRA insurance until it expired. Selecting your additional Medicare coverage during open season, again this is from memory, means you won’t have to go through medical underwriting. The Soc. Sec. website takes some getting used to, but it’s very complete. It can be tough to get a person by phone, but not impossible.
Again, from memory … it’s been almost a year after all :rolleyes:… you are automatically enrolled in Medicare by Social Security. You’ll get a mailing to that effect. You’ll get so many mailings you won’t want to open your mailbox. If you can open it. You can opt out (there’s a mailing) but why?
Make sure you find out if Medicare will accept your COBRA as your medigap policy. Even if it does, you may have a period of time between the expiration of COBRA and open season when you can select another medigap policy when you won’t have that extra coverage.
Thanks for the information.
**jasg **, from what you say I take it that the COBRA coverage is not directly tied to the person who was employed, and once she is on it she can keep it even when he drops off?
There was a long article in the Times about supplemental coverage, which gave me the impression that not getting it at 65 was a hassle. Which sounds like it is true.
But I never thought of using it for Medigap. That bears looking into.
Oops - I made a serious error here. Even though COBRA coverage is the same insurance as when you are employed, Medicare treats it differently and it affects your enrollment period.
Check out the last section in this link. It says you need to signup for Medicare Part B at age 65 or incur a penalty for late signup.
You should check with your employer or their COBRA administrator about your wife alone - and if they allow you to stay on after age 65. This link shows that it is complicated.
If you can have both, you might have to pay for both Part B (and perhaps D) and COBRA to avoid penalty for late enrollment and keep her insured. In my case, the cheapest combo of Parts B & D is $117/month. So you would have to decide if paying that for a year is worth it to keep her on COBRA.
In this case, you would have double coverage. Depending on what takes precedence, I guess your COBRA premium could change.
It is not necessary to sign up for Medicare at 65, that is if you are covered under an approved employer medical plan. But you have 60 days after losing coverage to sign up.
