Advantage plans let you switch every fall, no questions asked. Supplements do not. Nine in ten Advantage enrollees have no guaranteed right to buy one later. The 12-month trial right, the six-month window at 65, and the one thing Nevada has that Arizona does not.
Healthy, no prescriptions, so why pay for a drug plan? Because the penalty for going without one is permanent, it grows every month you wait, and the window to fix it opens once a year. I am an engineer, not an advisor, so I did the arithmetic with 2026 numbers.
The VA is excellent at the VA. Outside it, you are on Original Medicare, which pays 80 percent with no ceiling. A $0-premium Advantage plan (you still pay the Part B premium) can add a yearly cap, care outside the VA, and dental, vision, and hearing, and your VA drug coverage means no Part D penalty
Keep the family plan at work, or move yourself to Medicare while your spouse waits a year? I am an engineer, not an advisor, so I did the arithmetic: the family premium, Part B, a supplement, an IRMAA surcharge set by a two-year-old tax return, and the HSA rule that quietly voids contributions.
The company hands you 18 months of COBRA on the way out and it feels generous. Medicare's 8-month clock started the month you left, COBRA usually costs more than Medicare would, and no, you do not get to keep both. An engineer shows his work.
My wife just started a new nursing job and picked her health plan in one evening from a list of three. At 65 it feels like three hundred, and the person down the hall who used to vet it for you is gone.