An important announcement from Jeffrey Buckner, Associate Commissioner, Office of Strategic and Digital Communications, Social Security Administration:
The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services is providing equitable relief to individuals who could not submit premium-Part A or Part B enrollment or disenrollment requests timely due to challenges contacting us by phone. This relief applies to the 2022 General Enrollment Period, Initial Enrollment Period, and Special Enrollment Period.
If your clients were unable to enroll or disenroll in Medicare because they could not reach us by phone after January 1, 2022, they will be granted additional time, through December 30, 2022.
This is an arcane area of law but still very important because if you are eligible but fail to enroll in premium-Part A or Part B in a timely way, you may be facing lifetime penalties. This directly relates to the phone problems we mentioned in yesterday’s post.