A bigger number is not a clearer number. Take-Home Notes
October 3, 2026
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Show Notes
Eddie and Betty's Conversation
Welcome to The American Retirement Advisor. I'm here with Eddie, as always, and today we are talking Medicare, specifically the Annual Enrollment Period, which opens October 15, and what you actually need to do before that date arrives. This comes out of a piece by Ian Schaeffer, our COO, who was watching people at two library workshops this week, one in Glendale, one in Scottsdale, and wrote down what he saw. And Eddie, some of what he saw is going to surprise you.
Yeah, I read it and I kept thinking, okay, I would have been one of those people in that room. Some of what he caught is stuff that I think most of us just assume we already know, and it turns out we don't.
So set the scene a little. What was happening in these workshops?
People came in holding their Annual Notice of Change, that's the letter your plan is required to send you by September 30 every year. And Ian noticed that a lot of them had the letter, but had not absorbed that their plan was changing for 2027.
Wait. They had it in their hand and still didn't know things were coming?
Possibly right in the envelope. And he's very clear that he's not blaming anyone. The letter is long, and the table with the numbers that matter is a few pages in. You have to go looking for it.
Okay, so it shows up, people receive it, and then it sort of just sits there on the counter next to the mail pile.
The mail pile is real. The mail pile gets us all.
So what does Ian say to do with it?
Open it, find the cost table, and write the numbers down on a single sheet of paper. He walks through what the four key lines to find are in the Take-Home Notes from the workshop. But the first step is just physically opening the envelope.
Which sounds almost too simple, but apparently a lot of people haven't done it.
Right. And the consequence of not doing it is that you roll into January still on a plan that may have changed its costs, changed its network, changed its drug coverage, and you didn't know because you didn't check.
Okay, so let's say someone opens the letter. They've got the numbers in front of them. The next thing a lot of people probably do is go straight to Medicare.gov and say, just tell me which plan to pick.
And it can do a lot. It lists every single plan available in your area. It has a drug search tool that does the math with your specific prescriptions and your specific pharmacy. That's useful.
But?
But it cannot tell you whether your doctors are in a plan's network. And here's where it gets wild. When Ian's team pulled the Maricopa County data on October 1, none, zero, of the 52 standard Advantage options had doctor information loaded for 2027 yet.
Fifty-two plans and not a single one had anything in there yet?
Not one. And the room saw it live, which is kind of a remarkable teaching moment. The site isn't broken. The data just isn't there yet. So when Ian's team checked, the doctor field was empty.
And there's another thing he points out about what the site searches for. It's not just that the data is missing.
Good catch. The search looks up individual doctors, not hospitals. So even when the data comes in, if your concern is which hospital a plan covers, that's a different question and the tool doesn't answer it the same way.
So Medicare.gov is helpful for the drug cost piece, and then you have to go do your own detective work for the doctor piece.
Each plan has its own directory, and Ian says you also have to call the doctor's office directly and ask whether they'll be in that plan's network in 2027. The directory can be out of date. The phone call confirms it.
I feel like that's the step everyone skips because it takes actual time and you have to be on hold.
It's the one that matters most if keeping your doctor is a priority.
Alright, can we spend some real time on the part of Ian's piece that he calls the moment of the day? Because I read it and I want you to explain it to me, because I think there's something really important buried in it.
The numbers section.
That's where it gets interesting. He's talking about the plan card, all the figures on it, and he says something like: making a number bigger doesn't make it clearer. And I thought, what does that mean?
Okay, so here's the problem. Every figure on a plan card is technically correct. None of them are lies. But each one is answering a very specific question, and it's not always the question you think you're asking.
Give me an example.
Take the monthly premium. You see, say, zero dollars, and you think: this plan costs nothing. But the premium doesn't include what you're already paying for Part B. In 2026 that's $202.90 a month for most people. The 2027 number comes out later this fall. So a zero on the plan card, where those plans are offered, still isn't zero out of pocket for most of us.
Oh, that's a big one. People see zero and think they're paying nothing.
Zero on the plan, not zero total. Those are very different things.
What about the out-of-pocket maximum? That one sounds so reassuring. Like, here's the most you'll ever pay.
Comforting as that is, Ian gets really specific: that limit does not include prescriptions. So if you have significant drug costs, you could hit that cap and still be spending real money on the drug side.
Wait, so those are two completely separate buckets?
They don't talk to each other at all. There's a distinct cap just for drugs. For 2027 that cap is $2,400. But it only covers drugs, and the out-of-pocket max only covers medical.
So you could, in theory, hit both limits in the same year.
Right, and if you only looked at one of those numbers, you'd have a very incomplete picture of your worst-case year.
I feel like this is one of those things where I'd look at the plan card, feel like I understand it, and be completely wrong.
That's what Ian is describing. The numbers look clean and clear. Bold font, nice layout. And that visual confidence is sort of the danger, because each number is narrower than it appears.
Can we talk about the deductible line too? Because he flags something there that I didn't know.
Yeah, so a plan can have two separate ones. One for drugs, one for medical care. And for 2027, the drug one can go up to $700. So when you see a number on that line, you need to ask: which one is this?
Because "deductible" sounds like one concept but it might be two of them.
Right. One label, potentially two answers.
Okay, and then there's the estimated yearly cost number. I feel like that one is the sneaky one.
It's built from what you typed in. Your drugs, your doses, your pharmacy. Change any one of those inputs, and the estimate changes. Skip filling them in, and the number that comes back isn't about you at all. It's about some hypothetical person.
So if someone just clicks through without entering their actual prescriptions, that estimate is basically meaningless for them.
Right, and that's why the most important thing you can do before you use that tool is take the time to enter your real information.
Ian has this really nice line about it. Something like: seen in bold on a clean screen, each number looks like the answer. But put together, with your doctors checked, they start to become one.
I liked that line. It's not that any individual number is wrong. It's that no individual number is the whole answer. You need all of them, and you need to know what each one is and isn't counting.
The tip he gives for keeping track of this, it's so simple, and I kind of love it.
The one word next to each number.
Yes. You write it down, and then next to it you write one word describing what it covers. Premium: plus Part B. Out-of-pocket: medical only. Drug cap: drugs only. Estimate: my drugs, my pharmacy.
And if you can't fill in the word, if you look at a number and you don't know what it covers, that's the number you need to ask about. It's a built-in test for whether you understand what you're looking at.
I'm going to be honest, I think a lot of people would get stumped on at least one of those.
Probably the out-of-pocket maximum and the drug cap, because they feel like they should be the same thing, and they're not.
So let's bring this back to what someone listening right now can do. Dates matter here.
The Annual Enrollment Period runs October 15 to December 7. Any change you make in that window takes effect January 1. So you've got a window, but it's not unlimited, and you want to go in prepared, not scrambling.
And Ian lays out three things to do before October 15, in a specific order.
So if I had to boil it down to steps: First, open the letter. Find next year's cost table and write those numbers down on one sheet of paper, with a note on what each number covers and what it leaves out. Second, check your doctors in the directory of every plan you're considering. Third, make that phone call we talked about earlier, the one to the doctor's office directly, because as Ian pointed out, the directory alone just isn't enough to go on.
Three steps, but the first one is the one that unlocks everything else.
If the letter is still in the envelope, nothing else can happen. That's the starting point.
What if someone missed the workshop? Is there a way to get the Take-Home Notes?
Ian mentions they're all linked in the last one, so if you can get to that final document, you've got all of them. And for specific questions, like if you're looking at a number and you genuinely don't know what it covers, that's exactly what the advisors are there for.
That's the right call. Because some of this stuff, the exact rules around drug deductibles, what's in network for specific plans next year, that's granular stuff that changes, and you want a real person walking you through it, not a guess.
Especially because we're at that point in the year where some of the 2027 data isn't even fully published yet. The Part B premium for 2027, for example, Ian says it comes out later this fall. So for anything that's still in flux, writing it down and asking the team is the right move.
They can be reached at 602-281-3898. We'll say that again at the end, but write it down now if you're near something to write with.
The other thing I'd say: if your situation has any real complexity, multiple medications, specialists you want to keep, maybe you're splitting time between two states, that's not a situation where you want to be doing this research alone.
And October 15 comes faster than you think it's going to.
Every year. Every single year, people say that.
Alright, let me see if I can land the big takeaways from Ian's piece. The letter: open it, find the table, write the numbers down. Medicare.gov: great for drug cost estimates, not yet useful for doctor networks, and it searches by doctor not hospital. The plan card numbers: each one is correct and each one is narrower than it looks. The premium doesn't include Part B, the out-of-pocket max doesn't include drugs, and the estimate is only as good as what you entered.
And the one-word test. Next to every number, write what it covers. If you can't fill it in, that's your question for an advisor.
I keep coming back to how much better that workshop room probably felt walking out than walking in. Like, they brought a letter they didn't fully understand, and left actually knowing what was in it.
That's the whole point of Ian watching from the back of the room, I think. You see what lands versus what just sounds helpful.
If you want that same experience without having to find a library session, sit down with one of the advisors at American Retirement Advisors before October 15. Bring your letter, bring your prescriptions list, bring your doctors' names. You can reach the team at 602-281-3898, and that conversation is at no cost to you. Don't let that envelope sit on the counter any longer. October 15 is coming, and you want to be ready.