Medicare and Health Care

Yes, the person at SSA really messed up your Part B enrollment. Here is a link to the table of contents for the SSA instructions provided to their employees regarding this. Sections .010 through .030 deal with initial and general enrollment periods and section .165.C explains what the effective date of the Part B coverage should be based on the month within the initial enrollment period in which the application was received. You do not have the option of selecting a month other than the month determined by those rules.

https://secure.ssa.gov/a.../poms.nsf/lnx/0600805000

Your initial enrollment period runs from August 2020 through February 2021. Since you filed the enrollment request in February, which was the last month of the enrollment period, the Part B should actually not be effective until May 2021.

You could have actually made the Part B effective date even later if you had waited until March to file. This is because in addition to the initial enrollment period there is also a general enrollment period that runs January through March of every year. Since your initial enrollment period overlapped with the general enrollment period, an enrollment in February is covered under the initial enrollment period rules. But an enrollment in March would be under the general enrollment period rules, with your Part B coverage not beginning until July of this year.

Something similar to your situation happened when my wife filed for Medicare. We waited until the month she was 65 for her to file which meant Part B should have been effective the following month. But SSA set the Part B date as age 65, meaning we were billed for an extra months premium. I had to go into the local office and file a request for reconsideration of the effective date established to move the effective date to the later month. I actually printed out the actual procedure from the POMS to show them what should have been done. When you contact the office to correct the situation you might want to quote the procedure above to them. I worked for SSA for over 36 years in one of the Payment Centers and the common opinion was that that the people in the local offices,while very dedicated and hard working in dealing with the public, were just not very well trained in some areas.

Requests for reconsideration have to be in writing and are handled by personnel in the Payment Centers, not in the local offices.

The first thing you should do is go download the form to request a reconsideration of the Part B entitlement date that was established.

https://www.ssa.gov/forms/ssa-561-u2.pdf

I've been retired for over 10 years and am not up-to-date on all the adjustments SSA has made due to COVID but do know that almost all employees are working remotely from home at the moment, which is why making contact with someone is more difficult. Check the award letter that you received. It should have instructions on what to do if you disagree with the decision. If it provides an address to use for the appeal, mail it there. If it doesn't and just says to call if you disagree, you'll have to do that. If you have a phone number for you local office, as opposed to the national 800# (not easy to find since SSA tries to direct the public to the 800#), I'd certainly try calling there first and asking them where to mail the appeal. My understanding is that many of the local offices have a small number of employees, mainly managers, working on site to handle things that must be done face to face but you would need an appointment to see them, you can't currently just walk into the office. I'm not sure this situation would qualify for a face to face meeting, but if they answer the phone they should at least be able to tell you where to send the appeal. Sorry I can't be of more help.

If the application was actually filed this month (February) then the Part B should start effective May 2021.

I think that in order to make the Part B effective date July 2021 you would normally need to completely withdraw the application you have already filed and then file a new application in March. If you look in Section .080 of the POMS chapter I linked above it covers requesting the withdrawal of an application. As long as you request withdrawal within 2 months of when you filed the application it should be honored. But with it already being late February there are some timing issues that might result in an even bigger mess if you go that route as I doubt if SSA would get around to approving the withdrawal and notifying you of the approval before the end of March. As an alternative you might be able to avoid that hassle by just requesting equitable relief instead of just reconsideration (can still use the same form). Sections .170 through .210 of the POMS chapter cover this.

You might include a statement such as "As a federal retiree with FEHB coverage, my intent when filing for Part B was to have it start at the latest possible month to still avoid a 10% penalty increase. This intent was clearly indicated in the remarks I included on my application. Pursuant to a discussion with one of your 800# representatives, I filed my Part B enrollment request in February 2021, which is the last month of my initial enrollment period. Per SSA instructions in POMS HI 00805.165 the effective date of my Part B enrollment should be May 2021 based on that filing date. You have erroneously enrolled me in Part B effective December 2020. I have since learned that I could have waited until March of 2021 and filed for Part B in the last month of the 2021 general enrollment period. Then, the part B enrollment would be effective July 2021. At a minimum my Part B effective date should be changed to May 2021 based on the date I actually filed the application. In addition, I relied on incorrect advise provided by the SSA representative when deciding to file the application in February. If correct advise had been provided I would have waited until March to file. Therefore, I believe that the equitable relief provisions are applicable, and that you should change my Part B entitlement date to July 2021 to conform to my intentions."

What I'm wondering is if someone did make a record of your call to the 800# and SSA somehow used the date of that call as what is considered a protective filing date for the application. Did you perhaps make the call to the 800# last November? I ask because the Part B entitlement date established would only be correct if the application was filed in November. But even if that is when you called the 800# my recollection is that protective filing dates are not applicable for Medicare only claims, and in any case a protective filing date should not be used if it would result in an entitlement date that is contrary to the wishes of the claimant.