Complexity thy name is Medicare or diving in donut holes.

Except for joking about the “Medicare Buffet” I have put off thinking about Medicare its costs and its complications for as long as I can.  But now I’m within a hundred days of having to sign up and I’m starting to pay attention.  The first thing I discovered is that my countdown counter has been wrong about when I become eligible.  I am closer to the front of the buffet line than I thought.  It is only 87 days until the taxpayers are taking responsibility for paying my medical bills. I’ll see if Nancy H. my brilliant computer dude can change the counter.

Eligibility for Medicare doesn’t start on your sixty-fifth birthday.   It starts  (I’m not making this up) on the first day of the month in which your birthday falls, unless you were born on the first in which case your eligibility starts on the first day of the prior month. Fortunately there is a calculator on the Medicare.gov website.  All you have to do is answer about 10 simple questions and it does the calculation.

Next I’ll explore Medicare parts A, B, C, D and the mysterious donut hole.