Richard Chan

particularly over the last 18 months, there's probably been about 30 health systems that have dropped different plans across the country.

Once you've done that, the next best step is really reach out to your agent, broker, or your state health insurance program, someone like Coverite.

We can help you navigate what are the different benefits for 2026, go through maybe what works for you, and then select a plan that maybe makes sense for what you need.

But all in all, in short, make sure to read

what's changing, make sure to get ahead of it and talk to someone if you're not sure if there's something better or there's something that's missing.

Yeah, the SHIB programs are mostly volunteers.

They're not necessarily licensed, but they're capable of kind of understanding the basics of Medicare.

And that's obviously different to agents and brokers like ourselves who are appointed with each of the carriers and licensed to sell those.

So we go through certification and licensing.

And that's different to Medicare.gov, which also you're calling it the federal government hotline, which again, as I mentioned earlier, it's going to be hard to reach them probably over the coming weeks given the shutdown.

Exactly.

Yeah, there's a lot of ins and outs as it relates to drug costs, how the drugs work.

Maybe you've got special drugs and how to get approvals for those.

And so generally, with people who are licensed to understand how each of the insurance companies work, if you need those sorts of approvals, that's definitely a great channel to go through.

Thanks a lot, Robert.