Turning 65 and being eligible to elect Medicare coverage can be a tricky time. If you have medical coverage through your employer, you may want to delay the election of your Medicare Part B coverage as this costs money. Medicare Part A is free. In certain circumstances you will not want to wait to elect Part B. When you employer has over 20 employees, Medicare is secondary, meaning it pays after your employer coverage. However, if there are less than 20 employees, Medicare is primary. Why this is important is that if you wait to elect Part B because you have coverage through your employer, it may come back against you. Part A covers Hospitalization and Part B covers the Physicians. Since Medicare is primary, all claims will go there first and then to the employer based plan. If you don't have Part B, those claims can't go to Medicare and will not be sent to the carrier, they will stop. Effectively you will have no coverage for anything that would have been paid through Part B, namely any physician fees. Therefore, if your employer has less than 20 employees and you or your employee is eligible to elect Part B, elect it. You have three months prior to your effective date, the month of you effective date and three months after to sign up for Part B.
For more information you can call Social Security at 1-800-772-1213 or go to the Social Security website .
