Just discovered parents do not have Medicare Part A coverage.

Medicare Advantages are contracted out by Medicare and must cover everything that Medicare A & B cover. They also cover prescriptions, vision, and dental that people with straight Medicare have to pay for out of pocket because Medicare A&B do not cover these things.

Glad everything got straightened out.

UPDATE: After months of trying to work with the SS office, submitting form after form, phone calls & letters (all to no avail), our Hospice that took care of my father hired a new accountant and guess what?! Apparently, Medicare Advantage (which they do have) DOES cover Hospice care so we don't need the Medicare Part A to pay when my mother does qualify for Hospice.
I can now quit worrying about working with the SS office and concentrate on loving my mother through this difficult journey.
Hope this info helps someone else out there with the same problem...
Blessings to one and all.

It's a pity what seems to have happened to Hospice in some instances. Where I live, a very large hospital that is part of a huge very profitable national network, in the last year entirely shut down their Hospice unit.

If I am not mistaken Medicare Part A is hospitalization primarily. Also skilled nursing, some other things and Hospice.
WHAT DOES COVER THIS for your parents? You list what their insurance is. I would assume some part of their insurance covers hospitalization, and that would be the part that would cover Hospice for them as well.

I will tell you this. Don't expect much out of hospice. In the last years it has gone from a mission to a hedge fund mess. They are all for profit and they give you very little. I recently had a friend, end of last year, pass with Hospice. You get about 2-3 bath assists a week from an aid that is in and out like greased lightening. You get an RN visit once a week. She will take your BP and sit at bedside a second. You get a call from a Social Worker who knows almost nothing and a call from a clergy who hopes you aren't religious at all. That's about it, along with that nifty little bottle of morphine.

Just saying, if you are counting on a lot from what was to me the miracle of Hospice? It is over. And the current one is charging Medicare a massive chunk to do nothing much at all. IMHO.

One of the things we need to do as parents, is make sure our paperwork is in order and our children understand what we have and don't have. I have a small filing cabinet. I am about to go thru it again and make some changes to make it as easy as I can for the girls.

Your parents had to be aware that they would not be receiving SS benefits and because of that, no Medicare either. My Sister was a government employee and very aware that she would not receive these benefits. Just her pension and continued health care thru the government.

Good Luck and update. We learn from others.

Update: Finally uncovered the fact that neither had paid into SS taxes for Medicare which wasn't required while they were working. Therefore, neither are eligible for Part A. However, I'm currently trying to get together with SS office (right?!) and should be able to sign my mother up for a premium of $506/mon - which would be worth it at this point to be able to get her into Hospice. Everyone that plans to grow old needs to check to make sure they have Medicare Part A...just saying...

My dad is in the same situation with his Blue Cross/Blue Shield providing the hospitalization coverage and Medicare Part B for his doctor visits. He was covered under a system that no longer exists for insurance coverage in many government jobs which your parents may have had as teachers. The hospitals never can figure it out and usually cite some spurious HIPPA restriction (that doesn't exist) to prevent me from explaining it to them. Usually they keep sending me bills, which I keep telling them to send to BC/BS until they give up. Luckily my dad is also retired military so has TRICARE in additional but that usually just adds to the confusion. When my mother needed hospice we had to cancel her BC/BS so that the Tricare would become primary so that it would cover hospice. The hospital social worker helped us figure it all out. Have you been able to contact a patient advocate or the hospital social worker to help you on this? We'd never have been able to get it all done on our own as no one could ever understand our problem.

Igloos info was interesting. I know my cousin gets less SS in Cal because he has a teachers pension. Having enough quarters is interesting too. My cousin got his quarters in long before he taught school.

Until now I thought part A was a given and you paid a premium for part B. I know when DH turned 65, his Company health insurance went to a supplement and we had to have part B. Actually, since we started taking SS at 62, we received our Medicare card automatically at 65 with A&B already on the card.

Learn something every day.

HappyRobins suggestion on contacting SHIP is really good. You might also contact Center for Medicare advocacy 202/293-5760.

Is the issue possibly they didn’t sign up ages ago because they didn’t have 40 quarters each? They were on teachers retirement system of some sort so did not pay into FICA? And maybe…. maybe they just continued to let it slide as they got in an Advantage Plan and never bothered to look further as that seemed to work? Was this it?

If so, you may have to find out exactly what their work history is from SSA. Yiu would need to become their representative payee for SSA as SSA….. wait for it… does NOT recognize POAs…. so for even more fun! in all this, the SSA rep payee will need to be done. But whatever. If they have worked enough SS quarters, they can become Part A enrollee at a late date, but will have to pay a premium. It’s called a voluntary enrollment. With 30-39 quarters it’s $278 a month; with 29 or fewer quarters it’s $506 a month. As they are married, I think only 1 of them needs to qualify (so mom could have been a stay in the home type of wife). But the $ amount for the premium is for each of them. I don’t think there is any type of waiver available to get around this either. Yeah it sucks. Bottom line it is expensive but realistically, at 90+, they cannot ever find any other health insurance coverage.

As a side note, hospice pays on the average right under 5K a month, so having Part A is definitely worthwhile.

This Medicare.gov page https://www.medicare.gov/talk-to-someone provides a variety of ways to talk to someone either at Medicare or in your state.

At the bottom of the page, the State Health Insurance Assistance Programs (SHIPs) agents are usually good. They go through training and are fairly objective (and free!).

Also Medicare.gov has real humans you can talk to by phone.

"You can sign up for Part A any time after you turn 65. Your Part A coverage starts 6 months back from when you sign up or when you apply for benefits from Social Security (or the Railroad Retirement Board). "

Source: https://www.medicare.gov/basics/get-started-with-medicare/sign-up/when-does-medicare-coverage-start#:~:text=You%20can%20sign%20up%20for,Health%20Savings%20Account%20(HSA).

You can contact a broker to help you figure things out.