Medicare recipients who have trouble remembering to send the Medicare check every month or worry about a complicated online payment process are now eligible for Medicare Easy Pay. In this system, Medicare deducts premium payments automatically every month.
What Is Medicare Easy Pay
Medicare Easy Pay is an autopay system for Medicare recipients that deducts their premium for the coverage on the 20th of each month. When setting up Easy Pay, the recipient selects if they would like to pay from their checking or savings account and decide if they still would like a paper bill to keep as part of their records or if they would like to transition to all electronic.
How Does Medicare Easy Pay Work?
Medicare Easy Pay’s free online program allows an enrollee’s premium payments to be deducted directly from a debit card, credit card, checking account, or savings account. An enrollee can sign up for Easy Pay through a simple online setup or by sending a consent form to the Medicare office that’s filled out online, printed, and mailed in.
What Medicare Parts Work With Easy Pay?
The Easy Pay system allows Medicare recipients to pay for Parts A, B, and D. Recipients should note that a bill for Part B will only come once every three months, while Parts A and D will arrive monthly.
How to Sign Up for Medicare Easy Pay
According to the Medicare Website, participants can log in to their medicare.gov account, select “My Premiums” and then select “Sign Up” to complete the Easy Pay enrollment process. Alternatively, they can fill out a paper sign-up form and mail it in to be enrolled by a Medicare employee.
Note that the process can take 6-8 weeks to deduct the premium payments automatically, so Medicare beneficiaries should keep sending in their payments to ensure their account stays active and up to date. If Medicare cannot enroll the recipient in autopay after they’ve initiated the change, they’ll send a letter detailing why this is the case.
What To Expect After Signing Up
After the participant enrolls in autopay and Medicare begins drafting the payments, they’ll get a specialized statement around the 10th of the month informing them of the deducted premium amount and the date they can expect the deduction to occur. The premium deductions typically happen on or around the 20th of each month.
Paying for Medicare
There are several ways that a participant can pay their Medicare premium if Easy Pay isn’t an option:
Online
Recipients can pay online with a debit card, credit card, savings account, or checking account. They can also pay through the Medicare website or their bank’s online bill payment service. Please note that this payment method might require a service fee.
By Mail
Those wishing to pay by mail will need to wait for their statement to come via mail every month. Once the recipients reviews their statement, they’ll have to tear off the bottom portion of the statement, fill it out with their payment method or include a check in the envelope that came with the statement, and send it in for processing.
Make sure to double-check the bottom portion and sign where necessary. Otherwise, the Medicare office won’t be able to process the payment, and they’ll have to send it back.
Railroad Retirement Board
Similar to automatic deductions associated with social security income payments, payments will directly deduct to Medicare from any Railroad Retirement benefits that an enrollee receives.
Alternatives to Medicare Easy Pay
If an enrollee doesn’t qualify for Medicare or doesn’t have the funds to pay the premium, some affordable alternatives for health coverage are as follows:
Medicaid
Medicaid is a state and federally-run program accessible by citizens under a particular income level, known as the federal poverty level. Medicaid is free for those under this threshold.
Supplemental Security Income (SSI)
Medicare can take payments directly from a recipient’s social security income payments, with the remaining payment coming to the enrollee every month.
Medicare Savings programs (MSPs)
MSPs are programs for those who qualify for Medicare but have limited resources and income.
Visit the Nation Council On Aging website for more questions.