Inside Medicare | Why Am I Still Receiving Medicare Calls After Open Enrollment?

Janell Sluga Medicare & Individual Health Insurance Account Executive View Bio

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Question:

I keep getting calls from insurance companies asking about my Medicare coverage, I thought Open Enrollment was over?

Answer:

The Annual Open Enrollment Period is from October 15 to December 7 annually. You are correct, that period has passed.

From January 1st to March 31st, we have what is called the Medicare Advantage Open Enrollment Period (MA-OEP). This time allows individuals who are ALREADY ENROLLED in a Medicare Advantage (MA) Plan to switch to any other type of insurance product they choose, with or without drug coverage.

MA Plans replace your Original Medicare Benefits, and they usually include prescription drug coverage. There are many MA Plans available in our area, but not as many as last year. You may remember we lost a LOT of plans, and many individuals already made their switch for 2026.

All the MA Plans available have different monthly premiums, co-pay structures, and networks of providers, so I will speak broadly to this situation.

The MA Plans take the form of organizations like HMO’s (Health Maintenance Organizations), PPO’s (Preferred Provider Organizations), or PFFS (Private Fee-For-Service) plans. Each year, insurance companies adjust coverage. These changes include adjustments for premiums, co-pays, deductibles, additional benefits offered, and more. If you kept your plan, you might not have realized how much it changed, or you have just decided you might want something different.

During this MA-OEP timeframe, you can go from an MA Plan (with or without drug coverage) to a different MA Plan (with or without drug coverage), or to Original Medicare AND a Stand-Alone Drug Plan (PDP), or Original Medicare and NO drug coverage.

It is also important to remember that if you are dropping an MA Plan and returning to Original Medicare, you should seriously consider adding on a Medicare Supplement Plan. So leaving your HMO, PPO, or PFFS plan could reactivate your Original Medicare, and then you would need to decide to enroll in a Drug Plan plus a Medicare Supplement Plan. These two things do not happen without you actively enrolling in a product of your choice.

So if for some reason you chose NOT to get drug coverage as part of your MA Plan, you could change that choice from January 1st to March 31st.

During this period, your new coverage will begin the first of the following month. January is already over, but if you change your insurance during February, your new plan will begin March 1. If you change your insurance during March, your new plan will begin April 1.

This MA-OEP is also useful for those individuals who are deciding that they don’t want to stay in their MA Plan for any reason. One reason could certainly be that your premiums or copays have increased. Another reason could be that your doctor, hospital, or pharmacy no longer participates with your MA Plan. Another reason that people sometimes switch out of MA Plans is that they have a serious medical problem that may be covered more comprehensively with a different kind of plan, like Original Medicare (in this situation I am thinking of something like Cancer or Renal Failure).

If you decide to go back to Original Medicare, I always stress the importance of evaluating the option of adding a Medicare Supplement Plan. In New York State, you are allowed to enroll in a Medicare Supplement Plan anytime. In this situation, there are no pre-existing conditions limitations – in this type of change, you are going directly from one product to another, and the “pre-existing limitations” clause does not apply to you.

This MA-OEP from January 1 to March 31 is certainly one of the ways to change MA plans! So you will continue to see commercials on TV, and you’ll probably keep receiving mail and even the dreaded phone calls from MA Plans.

There are other ways that you can change your insurance plan called Special Enrollment Periods (SEP’s). There are lots of other SEP’s and there may be one that fits your situation, so if you feel stuck in your current plan outside of these broad enrollment periods, you can still seek exceptions to see if you can switch!