Scarlet Poulet (right), pictured with wife Nadine Kujawa, before Poulet was diagnosed with cancer in 2019.
Courtesy: Scarlet Poulet
Medicare’s rules for signing up have put 68-year-old Scarlet Poulet in an unenviable situation.
The New Orleans resident, who is recovering from cancer, has been enrolled in Medicare Part A (hospital coverage) since 2018 when she reached the eligibility age of 65. Yet due to how Medicare interacts with insurance through an employer — coverage she lost in August — Poulet is now not allowed to sign up for Part B (outpatient care) until January.
That’s when a three-month enrollment window opens for beneficiaries who didn’t enroll when they were supposed to. Even then, however, Poulet’s Part B coverage would not start until July due to Medicare rules — and she could face life-lasting late-enrollment penalties.
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“The rules surrounding Medicare eligibility, particularly as it relates to employer-based coverage, is unnecessarily complicated, with quite unfair results in some situations, like this one,” said David Lipschutz, associate director and senior policy attorney for the Center for Medicare Advocacy.
For most of Medicare’s 63.3 million beneficiaries, long delays before coverage begins or late enrollment penalties are not typical. However, for individuals…
