If your coverage is not subsidized: Ways to buy health plans.  (Whether or not receiving benefits subsidized by HPInc or HPE.)

Menu of Benefits Enrollment pages: Enrollment Menu 

Based on reports from HP Alumni Association members who have completed enrollment. Join forums: https://www.hpalumni.org  Not officially endorsed or supported. Question? Email us: info@hpalumni.org  (Updated Dec 4, 2025)  

Deadline extended if losing your health plan (because HPInc or HPE dropped your group plan -- or because your current insurer in no longer offering plans in your county) you have another week or two after the Dec 7 national policy-change deadline to buy a plan for 2026. Buy your new policy well before Dec 31 to avoid having a gap in coverage due to delays or errors. If you join a new plan after Dec 31, coverage in the new plan won't start until the month after you join. (As stated in the notice from your current insurer.)

To review...

HPInc. No group Medicare plans will be offered by HPInc for 2026. Instead, for certain* HP and DEC retirees HPInc is offering a special Retiree Reimbursement Account to subsidize open-market individual Medicare plans -- as well as non-Medicare drug, dental and/or vision (but not hearing) plans -- if they are bought from one specific nationwide insurance sales agency, Alight Retiree Health Solutions. AlightRHS carries Medicare plans from many, but not all, major insurers.

Correction: RRA subsidy without purchasing from AlightRHS. https://www.hpalumni.org/enroll-rra-workaround

HPE. No U.S. group plans -- Medicare or otherwise -- will be offered by HPE for 2026. Instead, you need to transition to publicly-available individual plans. To assist with the transition, HPE is referring retirees to a nationwide insurance sales agency, Alight Retiree Health Solutions. AlightRHS carries Medicare plans from many, but not all, major insurers..

"For retirees and covered family members (and surviving spouses) with a mix of Medicare eligibility, Alight can help you choose from insurance options available in the federal marketplace, or if you live where state-based marketplaces exist, such as in California [i.e. Covered California], they can help refer you to local options... Then, when you reach Medicare age, Alight can continue supporting your coverage needs." [State Exchange Directory on the official Medicare site.]

If your coverage is not subsidized, there are many ways to select and buy health policies -- aside from the AlightRHS sales agency:

- National sales agencies (such as AlightRHS) offer some of the policies available in your county.

- Some insurers (such as Mutual of Omaha or Regence) sell direct.

- Some insurers and health systems (such as Kaiser or Harvard Pilgrim) only sell direct. Some have preferred sales agencies -- such as Sutter with Alignment Health.

- A local independent agent may be more familiar with what works best in your area -- and be more experienced in constructing applications that get approved.

Insurance agents are regulated by each state. They are required by law to be licensed in your state of residence. (Need not be a resident of your state.)

Agents are authorized to transact in a given state only on behalf of specific insurers, as indicated in your state's insurance license registry, which you can find online. (For example, California: https://cdicloud.insurance.ca.gov/cal )

There are federal rules that apply to Medicare sales agents. For example, they can't call you unless you give permission or are already their customer. https://www.medicare.gov/health-drug-plans/health-plans/your-coverage-options/plan-marketing-rules

To compensate for local cost variations, Advantage policy availability and prices vary by county.

Insurers may elect to drop coverage in some counties and use loss-leader pricing to gain long-term market share in other areas.

For a specific plan under the same terms, you pay the same price regardless of who you bought it from.

Once an application is approved by an insurer, a sales agency is paid an initial commission -- and continuing commissions every year for servicing your account. Advantage: $700-$860 for initial sale; $350-$430 for each year thereafter. Medigap: typically $260-$440 (22%) initial year and each year for five more years. Part D: $114, then $57/year.

Not all policies are available from AlightRHS. No sales agency -- including AlightRHS -- offers all policies available in your county. (For example, Harvard Pilgrim is only available direct. However, Tufts is available through Alight, per the HPInc Enrollment Guide.)

To see all Advantage, Medigap, and Drug plans available in your county from any source -- go to the official US Government site and enter your ZIP code and county. Notes: Some are small local or regional plans. The plan names indicate that some are for veterans or other specific groups. Some plans only sell direct or through a single agency. https://www.medicare.gov/plan-compare  (Non-Medicare: https://www.healthcare.gov )

Current Medicare policy cancelled early -- or recent new enrollment canceled.

Medicare maintains a central "Enrollment DataBase" to ensure that someone cannot be enrolled in multiple plans for the same time period. Insurers automatically report new enrollment approvals to Medicare, which continuously checks for coverage overlap. If a new policy that covers the same time period is found, Medicare causes the previous policy to be canceled.

If a problem, contact the insurance sales agency that sold you the misdated plan. Or contact Medicare.

Be sure to verify the starting date entered by the agent (or yourself) when you are applying for a new policy. One member discovered that their current plan had been cancelled when picking up a prescription.

If you have a problem with a plan. As with any insurance sales agency... start with the agency that sold you the plan. For Alight Retiree Health Solutions, if the first-level person can't resolve your issue, they can escalate it to a special group within Alight. The sales agency gets a monthly commission for servicing your account. (HPInc or HPE is out of the picture, except for reimbursing you from your RRA.)

Next step: Menu of key Enrollment issues: https://www.hpalumni.org/enroll-menu (Membership not required.)

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