Managing Medicare is hard enough for the average senior when skies are blue and life is moving along smoothly. It becomes far more difficult when skies turn gray and you are trying to make it through fire, flood or other natural disaster.

You can count on getting some help if the disaster has driven you to an American Red Cross shelter. Most Red Cross shelters will have a trained medical professional on duty who can help fill lost prescriptions and replace lost medical equipment.

A phone call to your Medicare plan should provide many, if not most, of the answers you seek – assuming there is a working telephone service. Your final source of help is the federal government itself. The key website is Medicare.gov. The phone number is 1-800-633-4227.  

As a general rule, save all the informational material your plan sends you. It may offer advice on how to handle things in an emergency. At the least, reading through the material will help you understand what your plan offers, and what it does not. The time to learn how your plan functions in a disaster is before disaster strikes.

Finding covered medical help

The first issue you may have to deal with in an emergency is where to find covered medical help if the doctors offered by your plan are not available. Temporary shelter from an earthquake or a wide-ranging wildfire may be a long distance from where you live. The answer, says an advisory from Medicare, is that if you have original Medicare, you can always see any doctor who accepts Medicare. 

“If you have a Medicare Advantage Plan,” the advisory says, “contact your health plan about making temporary changes, like using an out-of-network doctor during an emergency or a disaster.”

When in doubt, try getting contact information on doctors near to where you are sheltered. Call and ask if the doctor is included in your plan. Ask the Red Cross health professional in the shelter about leads to local doctors.

If you must evacuate your home in a hurry and you haven’t followed the best advice for creating a go-bag, your Medicare card may have gotten lost or left behind. If you have internet access, log into your secure Medicare account and print out a new card.

Logging into your account or creating a login is something you should practice doing before disaster strikes.

“Generally you can find your plan’s contact information on the membership card,” says Medicare. If you can’t find the card, do a web search for the plan’s contact information. Or call the Medicare number.  

The more you practice managing Medicare when conditions are fine, the easier things will go if you have to manage it in a disaster. 

The next most likely thing to occur in a disaster is leaving prescription medicines behind. Start by talking with a Red Cross health services volunteer for assistance in filling them.  

Look for a pharmacy that is part of your plan’s network. In many plans, prescriptions are only covered if they are filled in a pharmacy that is part of the network. Obviously, you hope to pay the lowest price, especially for a costly drug. But if it is truly a life-sustaining drug, you must pay the price or risk doing without.

If you do have to pay full price for the drugs, save all the receipts. Your plan may offer a refund for the extra out-of-pocket costs you incurred.

Prescriptions

Prepare for the day when things go awry. Order drugs in larger quantities – a 90-day supply instead of a 30-day supply. Make sure there are copies of every prescription in your go-bag. Talk to your plan about the prescription drug benefit so you understand all the details. If there is anything you don’t understand, go to Medicare.gov. 

All the advice about prescription drugs applies to any medical device you use routinely. Red Cross health workers may be able to help replace wheelchairs, walkers, diabetic supplies and the like. If not, try to locate replacement items locally. 

“In most cases,” says the advisory from Medicare, “we will cover the cost to repair or replace your equipment or supplies.” But that is only true if the replacement equipment comes from a Medicare-approved supplier. 

If you are in a Medicare Advantage plan, make sure you know how it handles lost equipment and supplies.  

Just because you are in a disaster situation does not mean you can skip paying your Medicare bill. “If you don’t pay your premium on time, your plan may disenroll you,” says the Medicare advisory. “You can make sure your premiums are paid on time by asking your plan to withhold your premium from Social Security or paying with electronic funds transfer through your bank.”

Autopay

Given that seniors can get a bit forgetful, it is not a bad idea to have all your accounts set up for autopay. That way you can be sure that mortgage, insurance, utilities and the like get paid on schedule even if you have the occasional senior moment. If you do miss payments, disaster or not, you can be disenrolled from your plan. If that happens, you must contact your plan and see if your dismissal can’t be reversed.

Special rules apply if you are receiving regular treatment for something major, like cancer, for instance, or because you are undergoing kidney dialysis. Running afoul of the Medicare rules could conceivably put your life at risk.

If you have Medicare Advantage or another Medicare plan, contact your plan to find out how to manage your treatment in an emergency.  

Things get more complicated if you are on original Medicare and receiving kidney dialysis, or if you are on the list to receive a kidney transplant. You should have Part A (hospital insurance), and Part B (medical insurance). In addition, you should have Part D (drug coverage). You need all three to get full coverage for your condition. You need all three to make sure you are covered if your kidney condition requires emergency attention when you are away from home.

If you need emergency help, ask the facility providing your treatment for recommendations on a facility near where you are being housed. Ask a Red Cross medical worker in your shelter for help finding a facility that can help you.

Study the rules

If there is a single theme that you need to take to heart, it is to study the rules that apply to your Medicare plan. You want to know all your rights and responsibilities before disaster strikes.

Learn all you can and make what phone calls you might have to make when you are safely in your own home. The more you learn ahead of time, the less you will have to do when wildfire threatens your home and you must leave home in the next few minutes with whatever you can grab on the fly.

Gordon Williams is a volunteer with the American Red Cross Northwest Region Communications Team.