Medicare-ACA advice

[Murph]

I'll be 65 in July 2024. DW will be 65 in June 2025. Both retired. We are currently in an ACA Silver Plan (Ohio), HSA eligible (high deductible), and get about 50% subsidy for our premiums (which are high). I plan to sign up for this plan again later this year.

Any advice, thoughts or strategy I should consider when it comes time for me to sign up for Medicare next year?

TIA

 

[orchid55]

I would strongly suggest that when you sign up for the ACA later this year, you get separate policies for you and your wife. Doing so will enable you to drop your ACA policy when you go on Medicare without endangering your wife's continuing ACA coverage.

 

[xlf11]

A good local ACA/Medicare agent will help a lot in the transition as our case was very similar to yours (two transitions about one year apart from ACA to Medicare). And it's free service paid by insurance/provider.

 

[Murph]

I would strongly suggest that when you sign up for the ACA later this year, you get separate policies for you and your wife. Doing so will enable you to drop your ACA policy when you go on Medicare without endangering your wife's continuing ACA coverage.

Have you actually tried that? If so, how to do this? I tried to test this anonymously, and had trouble. The ACA portal wants to know my income, and if I have no "dependents", then I get very little subsidy. Do I claim half for me, and half for DW?

 

[orchid55]

I didn't do this and had all sorts of problems dropping my husband's coverage and keeping mine. The solution seems to be signing up as a family and then putting different family members in different groups. Evidently there is a place in the ACA application to separate your family into groups.

One other thing that may be a surprise to you is that the subsidy for your wife alone ( when you are one Medicare) will drop quite a bit. The ACA considers the entire family income and if only one person needs a policy, then their subsidy will be correspondingly smaller.