Key takeaways
- Gather before you compare. An accurate medication list with dosages, and a list of doctors they'd mind losing, does most of the work.
- You need formal permission to discuss their Medicare with 1-800-MEDICARE or their plan — being their child isn't enough.
- Compare on total annual cost — premiums plus copays plus prescriptions — not the monthly premium.
- Their Annual Notice of Change arrived by September 30 and tells you exactly what's changing. Start there.
- Watch for pressure and scams. Enrollment season is also peak fraud season, and older adults are the target.
- Keep the decision theirs. Your job is to make the options understandable, not to choose.
Somewhere in most families there’s one person who ends up handling this. If that’s you — the one who gets the phone call about the confusing letter, or who sits at the kitchen table with a laptop trying to work out whether Mom’s plan is still the right one — this article is for you.
Helping a parent through Annual Enrollment is genuinely useful work. It’s also easy to do badly: to rush it, to decide for them, or to get three hours in and realize you never had the right medication list. Here’s the order that actually works.
Start in September, not November
The single biggest advantage you have is time. The comparison itself doesn’t take long once you have the right inputs — but gathering those inputs from someone else’s life takes a few conversations, and those go better unhurried.
By September 30, their plan must have sent an Annual Notice of Change showing what’s changing on January 1. That document is your starting point. Ask whether it arrived — and note that plans may now send it electronically, so it might be in an email rather than the mail pile.
What to gather before you compare anything
1. The real medication list
Not “a blood pressure pill and something for cholesterol.” You need the exact drug name, the dose, and how often it’s taken.
The fastest route by far: ask their pharmacy to print the last twelve months of fills. It takes the pharmacist about two minutes, it’s accurate, and it catches the prescriptions your parent forgot to mention. This one step improves a plan comparison more than anything else you can do.
2. The doctors and hospitals that matter
Write down every provider they’d genuinely mind losing — primary care, cardiologist, oncologist, the hospital system they’d want in an emergency, and their pharmacy. Then be honest about which are non-negotiable and which aren’t.
3. What this year actually cost
Rough totals are fine: plan premium, doctor and hospital copays, what they paid at the pharmacy, and any dental or vision spending. This becomes the benchmark you compare next year’s options against.
The permission step almost everyone skips
Here’s the practical wall people hit: you call the plan with a question and they won’t talk to you. Being someone’s child gives you no automatic right to discuss their Medicare.
You have a few ways to fix that, and they’re worth setting up before you need them:
| What it does | How to set it up |
|---|---|
| Lets Medicare share their information with you | A 1-800-MEDICARE authorization form naming you — also available through their Medicare.gov account |
| Lets their plan speak with you | The plan’s own authorized representative form — each plan has its own |
| Lets you act on their behalf more broadly | A durable power of attorney, which is a legal document worth discussing as part of estate planning |
The first two are short forms and solve the everyday problem. Getting them signed in September means October’s phone calls actually go somewhere.
Comparing plans without getting lost
Once you have the inputs, the comparison itself is straightforward if you hold to one rule: compare total annual cost, not premium.
A $0-premium plan is not a free plan. What matters is the sum of what they’d pay across a realistic year — premium, copays, prescriptions, and the maximum out-of-pocket if something goes wrong. Run each candidate plan against:
- Every medication on the list, by name and dose, at their pharmacy
- Each doctor and hospital that made the non-negotiable list
- The prior authorization and referral rules, which affect how easily care actually happens
- The maximum out-of-pocket — the worst-case number in a bad health year
And remember that staying put is a legitimate outcome. Plenty of reviews end with “your plan is still the best fit,” and that’s a real result, not a wasted afternoon. The point was to check, not to change.
Protect them from the other side of enrollment season
Autumn is when the phone calls and mailers surge, and older adults are the specific target. Two things worth saying out loud to your parent:
- Medicare will not call them out of the blue to sell, verify, or “update” anything.
- Nobody legitimate needs their Medicare number, Social Security number, or bank details to check eligibility on an unsolicited call.
A simple household rule helps: no decisions on an inbound call, ever. “I’ll talk to my daughter and call back” is a complete sentence. Our guide to enrollment-season spam calls covers the rest of the patterns.
Keep the decision theirs
This is the part that matters most and gets the least attention.
Unless you hold a legal authority that says otherwise, this is your parent’s decision about their own healthcare. Your role is to make the options comprehensible — to translate, to do the legwork, to ask the questions they didn’t know to ask — and then to let them choose, including in ways you might not.
That’s not only the right thing to do. It’s also practical: a plan someone chose themselves is one they’ll actually use and understand, and they’ll tell you when something goes wrong with it.
Frequently asked questions
Can I call Medicare on my parent’s behalf? Not without permission on file. A 1-800-MEDICARE authorization form naming you, or their plan’s authorized representative form, is what makes that possible.
Can I enroll them in a plan myself? Only if you have appropriate legal authority, such as a durable power of attorney. Otherwise the enrollment decision has to be theirs.
What if my parent has Medicare and Medicaid? They likely qualify automatically for Extra Help with drug costs, and they generally get more frequent opportunities to change drug coverage than other beneficiaries. That’s worth confirming before doing a full comparison.
What if they live in another state? Plan availability is county-specific, so the comparison has to be run where they live — not where you live. Everything else in this guide still applies.
They insist their plan is fine. Do I push? Ask to read the Annual Notice of Change together. If nothing meaningful changed, they’re probably right, and you’ll both know it rather than assume it.
Can we bring in help? Yes. An independent agent can run the comparison with you both on the call, and Florida’s SHINE program offers free counseling from trained volunteers.
You don’t have to do this alone
If you’re helping a parent this fall and would rather have someone run the comparison with you — with both of you on the call, so nothing has to be relayed second-hand — reach out for a free, no-obligation review or call 904-654-5450.
Kate Spilsbury (RSSA®, CMIP®) is an independent, licensed agent based in Jacksonville, serving Northeast Florida and Camden County, GA, and a good part of every autumn is spent at exactly this kind of kitchen table.
This article is educational and not medical, tax, or legal advice. Authorization requirements, plan availability, and benefits vary — confirm details with Medicare and the specific plan. Mere Benefits is not connected with or endorsed by the U.S. government or the federal Medicare program. We don’t offer every plan available in your area.
Founder & Licensed Insurance Agent at Mere Benefits — RSSA®, CMIP®. Independent, no-pressure guidance across Northeast Florida & Camden County, GA. This article is educational and not medical, tax, or legal advice.
Questions about your own situation?
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