It’s Medicare enrollment time, which means area seniors have a lot to think about.

The open enrollment period, which is from Oct. 15 to Dec. 7, gives seniors the opportunity to change or enroll in Medicare Advantage and prescription-drug plans for 2015. Those plans also change from year to year, so seniors who use them need to check their policies to see if anything is different.

“During the open-enrollment period, you should know about the main changes you can make,” said AARP Kansas Director Maren Turner. “You can switch from original Medicare to Medicare Advantage, of from one Medicare Advantage plan to another, or from one prescription-drug plan to another, or join a prescription-drug plan.”

Turner recommends that seniors consider the four “Cs”: cost (premiums, deductibles, copay, coinsurance); coverage (doctors, services, medications); convenience (accessibility of the doctors and services in your plan); and customer service (find out plan quality ratings at Medicare.gov).

“If you have been diagnosed with a new medical condition or changed medication, you need to really take this period as a time to compare plans to make sure you’re getting the coverage you need,” she said. “It’s really important to take this open-enrollment period very seriously.”

Seniors 65 and older automatically qualify for Medicare Parts A (inpatient coverage) and B (outpatient). Part A has no premium if the beneficiary worked at least 10 years at a job that paid Medicare taxes, while most beneficiaries pay $104.90 a month for the Part B premium. The Part A deductible is $1,216 (it will go up to $1,260 next year), while the Part B deductible is $147. Many seniors also purchase supplemental policies to fill in the coverage gaps from Parts A and B.

Thanks to 2010 Affordable Care Act, the Medicare prescription-drug coverage gap, or “donut hole,” continues to close. Beneficiaries now pay 47.5 percent of the cost of brand-name drugs, and will pay 45 percent next year (for generics, it is 72 percent this year and 65 percent in 2015).

“If the law stays in place, that coverage gap in the prescription-drug policy will be completed closed by 2020,” said Criss Tomlin, the Douglas County coordinator for Senior Health Insurance Counseling for Kansas, or SHICK. She added that some prescription deductibles have gone up by $10 for 2015.

There are nine Medicare Advantage plans available to Douglas County residents for 2015, as well as 28 stand-alone prescription-drug policies. Medicare Advantage policies are private, HMO or PPO plans. Not a lot of Kansans use them, however, because many of the in-network doctors and hospitals are located in urban areas, Tomlin said.

People 65 and over can sign up for Medicare online or at the local Social Security office. Seniors who are on Social Security are automatically enrolled in Medicare. Seniors who don’t sign up for Medicare Part B during either the three months before, three months after or the month they turn 65, they will have to pay a penalty if and when they do enroll (unless the delay happened because they had coverage through an employer).

For more information about Medicare, contact Criss Tomlin at Douglas County Senior Services at 785-842-0543 or ctomlin@sunflower.com.