Do you tell Medicare when someone dies?

How does a family notify Medicare of a death?

A family reads the Medicare page, checks what the funeral home has done, and makes a short list of any private plan. The steps below run in that order, and each one is a single action on a phone.

The June's Help Medicare checklist

1. Find the Medicare card, a recent Medicare mailing or a statement, and put it with the person's other papers.
2. Ask the funeral home whether it has told Social Security. The USAGov page on reporting a death covers Social Security and Medicare together.
3. On a phone, open Medicare's page called Report a Death and read it to the end.
4. Open the USAGov page on reporting the death of a Social Security or Medicare beneficiary, and read what it says about the two.
5. Look through statements and mail for a plan from a private company, such as a supplement plan or a drug plan, and list each by name.
6. Next to each plan, write the phone number printed on its own statement and the question: what does the plan want from the family?
7. After each call or visit, write the date, the name of the person who helped and any reference number.
8. Keep the notes where the family can find them.

• Medicare Report a Death Medicare's page on how a death is reported for Medicare., official page, opens in a new tab
• USAGov Report the death of a Social Security or Medicare beneficiary USAGov's page on reporting the death of someone who received Social Security or Medicare., official page, opens in a new tab

See also: Who tells Social Security when someone dies?, Who to notify when someone dies: the full list

Does Social Security notify Medicare?

Medicare's page called Report a Death and USAGov's page on the death of a beneficiary are linked in the first section, and the family reads both. The first question goes to the funeral home and the Social Security pages.

How a death reaches Medicare in a particular case is for those offices to say. The family reads the pages, asks, and writes down what it hears.

See also: Who tells Social Security when someone dies?

What does Medicare's page on reporting a death cover?

The page called Report a Death covers how a death is reported for Medicare. A family reads it for the way to report and for what to have ready.

Anything about coverage, premiums or refunds belongs to Medicare and to the plan. This page states none of it, and a call to the number on the plan's own statement is the way to ask.

What about a supplement or drug plan from a private company?

A plan sold by a private company is a company in its own right, so the family asks that company, using the number on its statement. The statement also shows what the monthly bill was for, which helps the family see which payments are still coming.

Those plans belong on the list of accounts to ask about. The guide on which accounts to cancel after a death shows how to go through a statement line by line.

See also: Which accounts do I cancel after a death?, How do I find a life insurance policy after a death?

What should be written down after each call?

A call is easy to forget by the evening, so the family writes four lines at once, on paper or on the notes page of a phone:

• The date, and the name of the office or the plan.
• The name of the person who helped.
• What was said, and what happens next.
• A reference number, and whether a confirmation will come in writing.

What does June's Help do with Medicare mail?

The list of who has been told in June's Help has no kind for Medicare or for a private plan, so the family keeps those notes on its own notes page. The family makes every call, and June makes none.

Medical bills and records are not accepted, and neither is a letter from a hospital, a hospice or a health plan. A letter that the check finds to be one of these is deleted from the file, and the page says why. A letter from Social Security can be added by photo, and June reads it in plain words.

With the assistant plan, June's Help emails the person who signed up a reminder before a due date that a letter prints, three days before unless the person who signed up picks other days. The person who signed up can invite a relative who lives in Texas to a family seat, an extra on top of the assistant plan, to read the letters June has read.

See also: How to sort the letters that arrive after a death