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Can One Lose Their Right to Medicare?

Medicare is a public health insurance program for senior citizens. If you have paid Medicare tax, you are entitled to free Medicare Part A coverage. Still, even if you have not paid Medicare tax, you are allowed to buy Medicare coverage if you desire to do so and meet the requirements.

  1. Entitled to Medicare

    • Once you have paid Medicare tax, you are entitled to receive Medicare Part A benefits, which is hospital insurance. Whether you add another type of Medicare coverage is entirely up to you. You do not lose your right to receive these benefits, and the government has to provide you this coverage once you become eligible to enroll. The general age at which you can enroll in Medicare is 65. However, although you cannot lose your right to receive Medicare benefits, your benefits may end due to an exception.

    Exception

    • People who have paid Social Security and Medicare tax and are disabled are eligible to receive Medicare benefits before age 65. However, your Medicare benefits start only after you receive Social Security Disability benefits for two entire years. If you start receiving Medicare benefits because you are disabled, your benefits may end. Since your benefits are conditional upon your eligibility to receive disability benefits, if these benefits end, your Medicare benefits will also end.

    Reasons to Lose Medicare

    • The main reason you can lose your disability benefits, and therefore your Medicare benefits, is if your condition improves, you go back to work and you start earning more than $1,000 per month. If this is the case, your disability benefits end. Your Medicare benefits also end. However, you have eight and a half years after you go back to work to use your Medicare coverage. Once you have been working for eight and a half years, your free Medicare coverage ends. This does not affect your eligibility to receive free benefits once you reach age 65.

    Purchasing Medicare

    • Although your right to receive free Medicare Part A coverage ends once you return to work and your disability benefits end, you are allowed to purchase Medicare coverage. To be able to do so, you must still be considered disabled, and you must have been entitled to free Part A coverage before you went back to work. If this is your case, you can purchase Part A and all other Medicare coverage available, which includes medical insurance, prescription drug coverage and other extra types of coverage that vary from one plan to another.

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