Can you still get Medigap after 65?

The one guaranteed window everyone gets

Federal law gives you exactly one open door: the six months starting the month you are 65 or older and enrolled in Medicare Part B. During that window, every company selling Medigap in your state must sell you any plan it offers, at its standard price, no health questions, no exclusions. The window does not repeat, does not reopen at open enrollment each fall, and does not care how healthy you are.

Miss it, and applying means medical underwriting: the application asks about your conditions, medications, hospitalizations, even pending tests, and the company may charge you more or decline you outright. Healthy applicants pass underwriting every day — it is a door with a bouncer, not a wall — but it is no longer a right.

The exceptions that reopen the door (guaranteed-issue rights)

A handful of situations force companies to sell to you with no health questions, usually for 63 days after the triggering event. In plain English:

• Your Medicare Advantage plan leaves — it shuts down, exits your county, or you move out of its service area.
• The trial right: you joined a Medicare Advantage plan when first eligible for Medicare and leave within 12 months — or you dropped a Medigap policy to try Advantage for the first time and change your mind within 12 months.
• Your other coverage ends through no fault of yours — an employer or retiree plan that was paying after Medicare stops, or your Medigap company goes bankrupt.
• The company misled you or broke the rules.

Note what's not on the list: simply wanting better coverage, a new diagnosis, or the fall enrollment window. The October 15 – December 7 season applies to Medicare Advantage and drug plans only — it creates no Medigap rights at all, a misunderstanding that catches people every year.

States that soften the rules

A minority of states go beyond federal law. New York and Connecticut require companies to take applicants year-round at any age ("continuous guaranteed issue"). Maine guarantees Plan A each year. A growing list of states — California, Oregon, Washington, Illinois, Idaho, Nevada, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Oklahoma, and others — have "birthday rules" that let people who already own a Medigap policy switch to equal or lesser coverage around their birthday without health questions. Indiana and most states have no such rule — underwriting applies. Your State Health Insurance Assistance Program can tell you your state's exact rules, free.

So what should you actually do?

• First, decide whether a plan is even worth it for you. That's arithmetic, not opinion: the Medicare cost comparison takes what you actually paid under Original Medicare and shows what each plan would have cost — and what your worst possible year looks like under each.
• Apply before you drop anything. If you're leaving a Medicare Advantage plan hoping to land on Original Medicare + Medigap, get the Medigap approval in writing first. The order of operations is the whole game.
• If you're healthy and thinking about it, sooner beats later. Underwriting judges the health you have on application day, and premiums rise with age under most pricing.
• If you're declined, ask an independent broker which carriers in your state underwrite more leniently (standards differ), check whether any guaranteed-issue right applies to you, and know that high-deductible Plan G — the cheapest letter — passes through the same underwriting but costs carriers less to accept.