The Must-Know Guide to Medicare Enrollment Season! | Carl Hohsfield on America’s Voice Live

Full Transcript:

Steve Gruber: Welcome back to America’s Voice Live. Today marks the start of the Medicare annual enrollment period, which runs from October 15th through December the 7th, happens every year. Here with me now to discuss what this is and why it’s so important is the executive vice president for AMAC’s Senior Resource Network, Carl Hohsfield.

Carl, nice to have you here.

Carl Hohsfield: Thank you for having me.

Steve Gruber: All right. So for people, maybe they’re new to it. For people that are veterans, maybe not, but what is the Medicare annual enrollment period? And why is the Medicare Annual Enrollment Period so important?

Carl Hohsfield: Yeah, the medical, the Medicare annual enrollment period is for Medicare beneficiaries to make a change to their current Medicare Advantage plan, their prescription drug plan, possibly think about adding a Medicare supplement known as Medigap.

And they have until December 7th, starting today, until December 7th to do And so it’s so important because plans change from one year to the next. 2025 has new plans that will be available. It’s great to meet with your agent, meet with your broker. Talk to AMAC, look at plans, compare them, and determine what plan might be right for you for 2025.

Steve Gruber: Yeah, so how does somebody go about enrolling in the Medicare plan during this enrollment period? What is the process?

Carl Hohsfield: Yeah, we make it real easy for everybody. Okay. All you have to do is call AMAC, call our Medicare line. 1 800 334 9330. We have licensed agents ready to take your call. We have multiple plan options available for everybody.

And we simply take the difficulty of navigating your way through Medicare out. We analyze your plan. We do a full needs analysis and we determine what plan is right for you. What plan is right for our AMAC member. we take the guesswork out and you could do the enrollment right. over the phone, which is wonderful.

the enrollments are online. The enrollments are electronic. The signatures are easy. And so the whole process along with scripting and everything, we can get you out of there in 2030, 45 minutes, depending on if it’s you and your spouse or just you, we make it real easy for you.

Steve Gruber: Yeah. it’s important thing to do now.

It’s also a time where you can make some adjustments, tweak a couple of things that are allowed during this period, correct?

Carl Hohsfield: That’s correct. there’s a lot of misinformation out there about what you can do or can’t do. There’s also all these one 800 commercials with, celebrities screaming at you on all these different benefits and making you feel like you’re rushed or you’re panicked into doing something that’s not necessarily the case.

Okay. You have until December 7th, you can make as many choices as you want until December 7th. Let’s just say you’re enrolled to something today. with another broker and you go, I need to talk to somebody at AMAC to see if I made the right choice. Call us, we’ll analyze it for you. Heck, we’re not afraid to tell you, stay on the current plan that you have.

That’s good for 2025, but we’ll walk you through it. We’ll talk about, should you stay on a Medicare Advantage plan for 2025? Should you change it? Should you add a prescription drug plan, take it away? If you have a Medicare supplement known as Medigap. So there’s all these different things. It can be difficult to navigate your way through Medicare if you’re doing it on your own, but it’s important to know you don’t have to do it on your own.

And what we do for you, what AMAC does for you is free. There’s no cost to you, whether you do this all on your own, or you do it with AMAC, with a licensed agent who, by the way, will be your dedicated agent through the process into the next year. You can call them anytime that we’re open. we, handle it for you at no cost to you.

Steve Gruber: Yeah, which is kind of nice this time of the year and nice any time of the year free is nice. Do I have to change my Medicare coverage during the enrollment period? Do I have to change things or can I continue with what I like?

Carl Hohsfield: Yeah, I kind of just mentioned that already, but it’s a great question because I think oftentimes when people call agents, whether it’s a local broker or over the phone, I think oftentimes, I know for a fact, people, Medicare beneficiaries, members are pressured into making a change.

You don’t have to see, we’re not afraid to look at it and say, Mr. Smith, your plan is still the best plan for 2025. And we’re, we’ll tell you that because if that’s what’s suitable for you, if that’s what’s right for you, that’s all we care about. Our agents are not incentivized to sell anybody a plan.

They’re incentivized to do one thing and one thing only. And that’s take care of our AMAC member.

Steve Gruber: All right. Last question here. What makes AMAC different from all those other organizations out there telling themselves and telling you that You represent American seniors. I know a little bit better about that.

I’m an AMAC member, have been for a while. And, but I’ll let you tell the folks what’s different.

Carl Hohsfield: let’s talk about the company that we’re all thinking about, right? AARP. What makes us different from AARP is AARP has a unique relationship with UnitedHealthcare, which means they work with UnitedHealthcare solely.

So if you call AARP, they’re going to offer you And UnitedHealthcare, of course, the largest insurance company in the I think in the world, go on. That’s correct. No, it’s a good point, but we want our members and everyone really to understand that AMAC offers choices. Once again, we’re not tied to any insurance company.

We don’t incentivize our agents to place a plant, a customer in any particular plan, AARP, you’re going to get. The plan options that United Healthcare offers. And that’s it with AMAC. You have choices and the choice is what’s right for you. It’s right for the customer. What’s suitable for you. And that’s a big difference.

We also, unlike AARP, we don’t make you become an AMAC member. Let’s just say you’re thinking about AMAC. You like us, but you haven’t signed up yet. We’d love for you to, but we will help you with your Medicare regardless. You don’t. AARP will make you enroll into an AARP membership. Then they’ll say, Hey, let us help you with your Medicare in which they’re going to offer limited options.

And by the way, they’re not going to tell you what else is in the market. They’re going to say, this is what we have. This is what you should enroll into. Meanwhile, down the street, you might realize you have other options that you may not have been aware of.

Steve Gruber: Which is important, for anybody paying attention real quickly, how do they find AMAC?

Carl Hohsfield: Yeah, you can visit my AMAC medicare. com. You can click on the benefits tab of AMAC.US our main landing page, click on benefits, click on medicare. You can go to MyAMACMedicare.Com where by the way, if you want to search for plan options available to you without using an agent, we have a great online tool where you could do that on your own.

And if you find a plan, you can enroll that way by yourself. Or you can then from there call one of our license agents. You can also call us at one eight. Yeah, you could also call us at 1-800-334-9330.

Steve Gruber: Alright, Carl, you come back, another time or two while this period is open, because I think it’s important for people to hear the message and to know what their options are and to be able to evaluate that with somebody who’s not saying, Hey, we’ll do this, but you gotta buy this.

That’s not the. That’s not the deal at AMAC. Carl, thank you for being here.

Carl Hohsfield: Thank you for having me.

Steve Gruber: Really appreciate it. All right. Up after the break, something that makes America wonderful today. Of course we do that every day, but also your America’s voice question of the day with Kamala Harris, finally agreeing to a hard hitting interview with Brett Baier.

We’ll see how hard hitting, what questions would you want him to ask? We’ll be right back.