Your Annual Notice of Change: What to Actually Look At

The short answer: if you are on a Medicare Advantage or Part D plan, your insurer has to mail you an Annual Notice of Change by 30 September every year. It tells you exactly what is changing about your plan on 1 January — the cost, the drug list, the network. Most people set it aside unopened. It is the single most useful piece of mail you get all year, and it arrives about two weeks before you can do anything about it.

What the notice actually is

Medicare Advantage and Part D plans are approved one year at a time. Every autumn the insurer sets next year’s terms, and every autumn it has to tell you what it changed. That letter is the Annual Notice of Change.

It is easy to mistake for marketing, because it arrives in the same weeks as a great deal of genuine marketing. It is not marketing. It is a required disclosure about the coverage you already own, and it is the only document that tells you, in advance, what your own plan is about to do.

The five things worth checking

You do not need to read the whole booklet. Five things carry almost all of the consequences.

1. The monthly premium. Straightforward, and the one most people do check. It is also the least likely of the five to be the thing that hurts you.

2. The drug list. Plans move medications between tiers, add restrictions like prior authorisation, and sometimes drop a drug entirely. A medication you have taken for years can move to a tier that costs several times what it did in December. Check every prescription you actually take, by name, not just the ones you think of as expensive.

3. The provider network. Doctors and hospitals join and leave networks annually. Nobody sends a letter that says your cardiologist is leaving — it shows up as a change in a directory. If you have a specialist you intend to keep, confirm they are still in network for next year, not just that they were in network this year.

4. The out-of-pocket maximum. This is the number that decides what a bad year costs you. It gets far less attention than the premium and matters considerably more.

5. Copays for the things you actually use. Not the full schedule — just the handful of services you genuinely expect to need. Specialist visits, imaging, an infusion, a regular therapy. Those are where a quiet change turns into a real bill.

“Nothing much changed” is worth a second look

A notice can be accurate and still leave you worse off. A plan can hold its premium flat, which is the number you would notice, and move a drug you take two tiers up, which is the number you would not. The summary at the front is written to be reassuring. The detail is where the year is decided.

The reverse happens too. A premium can rise while the plan becomes a better fit for you, because the out-of-pocket maximum came down or a medication you take moved to a cheaper tier. Premium alone is a poor guide in either direction.

Why Medigap does not send you one

If you have a Medicare Supplement, you may be wondering why this letter never arrives. Supplements do not have drug lists or provider networks, and their benefits are standardised by letter — a Plan G covers what a Plan G covers, regardless of who sold it. There is no annual redesign to disclose.

That does not mean nothing changes. Your premium can still rise, and your separate Part D drug plan does send its own notice, which is worth the same five minutes. But the Annual Enrollment period that dominates the autumn is not the mechanism that governs a supplement, and a great deal of the mail you receive in October assumes otherwise. Our page on how supplements and Advantage plans differ goes through why.

What to do once you have read it

If the changes do not affect you, keep the letter and do nothing. That is a perfectly good outcome, and most years it is the right one.

If something did change — a drug moved, a doctor left, the out-of-pocket maximum jumped — Annual Enrollment from 15 October to 7 December is when you can switch. Coverage chosen in that window starts 1 January. The annual enrollment checklist walks through the comparison in order.

And if you miss it, you are not necessarily stuck. Anyone on a Medicare Advantage plan gets a second window from 1 January to 31 March to make one change. It is narrower than Annual Enrollment, but it exists.

Common questions about the Annual Notice of Change

When does the Annual Notice of Change arrive?

By 30 September each year. Plans are required to have it to you by then, so if it is October and you have not seen one, call your plan and ask for a copy rather than assuming nothing changed.

What happens if I ignore it?

You stay on the plan, and next year’s terms take effect on 1 January whether you read them or not. There is no penalty for ignoring the notice — the cost is simply that you find out about the changes when you fill a prescription or see a bill.

Is the Annual Notice of Change the same as the Evidence of Coverage?

No. The notice tells you what is changing. The Evidence of Coverage is the full description of what the plan covers. The notice is short and worth reading; the Evidence of Coverage is long and worth keeping.

I threw mine away. Can I still see what changed?

Yes. Your plan can send another copy, and it is usually available by signing in to your plan’s website. It is also the kind of thing worth bringing to a review rather than reconstructing on your own.

Does a supplement have an Annual Notice of Change?

No. Medicare Supplement benefits are standardised and do not change annually the way an Advantage or Part D plan does. Your premium can still change, and your separate drug plan will send its own notice.

If you would rather not read it alone

Bring the letter. Going through it with someone takes about fifteen minutes, and the useful version of this conversation is the one where you find out in October rather than in February. If nothing needs changing, that is what we will tell you — the annual review is worth doing precisely because most years it ends in “you are fine.”

Call or text 770-765-7007, or pick a time — plain-language answers at no cost, and someone who is still there after you enroll. We are in Cumming, Georgia, and work with households across North Georgia: Forsyth, Cherokee, Hall, Dawson, Lumpkin, Pickens, Gilmer, Fannin, Union and White counties, plus north Gwinnett and north Fulton.