Medicare Open Enrollment 2026: What Oregon Residents Need to Know
If you’re on Medicare, or you’re helping a parent navigate it, fall is the season to pay attention. Medicare’s Annual Enrollment Period runs from October 15 through December 7 every year, and it’s the one guaranteed window most people get to make changes to their coverage without answering health questions or facing penalties.
Here’s what that actually means, and why it’s worth carving out an hour to review your plan.
What you can actually change
During Open Enrollment, you can switch from Original Medicare to a Medicare Advantage plan, move from Medicare Advantage back to Original Medicare, switch from one Medicare Advantage plan to another, or change your Part D prescription drug plan. Any changes you make take effect January 1 of the following year.
This is also the one time of year plans are required to send you an Annual Notice of Change — a document most people skim past or don’t open at all. It’s worth five minutes, because insurers can and do adjust premiums, deductibles, drug formularies, and provider networks from one year to the next. A plan that worked well for you this year isn’t guaranteed to work the same way next year.
Why your prescriptions matter more than your premium
The single biggest mistake we see is people choosing a plan based on the monthly premium alone. A low-premium Part D or Medicare Advantage plan can still cost you far more over the year if your specific medications aren’t on its formulary, or if they sit in a higher cost tier than they did on your previous plan. Pull up your current medication list before you compare anything else.
Original Medicare has known, published costs for 2026
If you’re on Original Medicare, it helps to know this year’s numbers going in. The Part B deductible is $283 for the year. The Part A deductible is $1,736 per benefit period, and Part A coinsurance runs $434 per day for days 61–90 of an inpatient hospital stay, and $868 per day after that. These are the gaps a Medicare Supplement (Medigap) policy is designed to close — which is why so many people pair Original Medicare with a Medigap plan rather than relying on it alone.
Medicare Advantage isn’t “better” or “worse” — it’s different
Medicare Advantage plans are private insurance that bundle Part A, Part B, and usually Part D together, often with extras like dental or vision. In exchange, most use a network of doctors, and that network — along with the plan’s costs and coverage — can change year to year. Original Medicare paired with Medigap, on the other hand, lets you see any doctor who accepts Medicare, with coverage that stays consistent, but no built-in extras and typically a higher monthly premium once you add a Part D and Medigap policy on top.
Neither path is automatically right. It depends on how often you travel, whether you have a specialist you don’t want to lose access to, and how much budget certainty matters to you versus lower fixed costs.
If you do nothing
If your current plan still works for you, you don’t have to do anything — your coverage will typically continue automatically. The risk isn’t inaction, it’s uninformed inaction: staying on a plan that quietly got worse without knowing it.
The bottom line
Open Enrollment is short, but it’s the one guaranteed door that opens every year. Whether you’re comparing Medicare Advantage plans, reviewing a Part D formulary, or deciding if a Medigap policy makes sense for your situation, the best time to look is before December 7 — not after a claim gets denied in February.