Medicare Help Across Douglas County, Kansas

If you live in Eudora, Baldwin City or Lecompton, or just over the line in Tonganoxie or Perry, a search for Medicare help brings up page after page about Lawrence. This page is for the rest of Douglas County and its neighbors. Nearly everything on the Lawrence pages holds where you are, and the one part that does not is set out below. Asking for Lawrence Medicare guidance costs nothing at all, since it is the carrier that pays the agent.

What is the same across the county

Inside the county, three things do not move with your address.

• Part A and Part B enrollment. Social Security, not an agent, handles both, and its office at 1440 Wakarusa Dr in Lawrence is the one that serves the county. Source: ssa.gov office locator
• Counseling and rides. The Senior Resource Center at 745 Vermont St in Lawrence serves seniors across the whole county, not Lawrence alone. It books SHICK appointments, the free Medicare counseling that sells nothing, and it runs Senior Wheels. Source: dgcoks.gov, Senior Resource Center; dgcoks.gov, Senior Wheels
• The plan review. Adam does it by phone, working through your doctors, your prescriptions, your budget and how you live, in that order. The town on your mailing label does not change a word of it.

For cardiology, oncology and transplant care, the name the Lawrence pages check plans against is The University of Kansas Health System in Kansas City, and that check is the same from any of these towns.

Town by town

Eudora

LMH Health Primary Care keeps a clinic in Eudora at 600 E. 20th Street, so routine care can stay in town.

Source: lmh.org, Locations

Baldwin City

LMH Health Primary Care has a Baldwin City clinic at 406 Ames Street.

Source: lmh.org, Locations

Lecompton

LMH Health lists no clinic in Lecompton, so primary care runs to Lawrence. For everything else here, nothing is different.

Source: lmh.org, Locations

Tonganoxie and Perry: across the county line

Both towns sit outside the county. Tonganoxie is in Leavenworth County and Perry is in Jefferson County. That matters for one kind of plan, and the next section explains which.

Tonganoxie

LMH Health Primary Care has a Tonganoxie clinic at 410 Woodfield Dr, so an LMH clinic sits in Leavenworth County too.

Source: lmh.org, Locations

Perry

LMH Health lists no clinic in Perry. Care runs to Lawrence, while the Advantage list is Jefferson County's.

Source: lmh.org, Locations

What changes at the county line

Medicare Advantage plans are approved county by county. A carrier files each plan for a set of counties, and a plan sold in one county may not be filed in the county next to it. So a Tonganoxie address sees the Leavenworth County list, a Perry address sees the Jefferson County list, and neither is the list an Eudora, Baldwin City or Lecompton address sees. A plan a friend across the line is happy with can be one you are not able to buy, and the reverse is just as true.

Stand-alone Part D drug plans and Medicare Supplement policies do not work that way. Both are sold statewide in Kansas. The stand-alone drug plans open to a Perry address are the ones open to a Baldwin City address, and a Kansas Medigap policy has no service area at all, so it pays the same wherever you live, in the county or anywhere in the state. The county line does not touch either one.

That is the whole of the difference: the county you live in decides what is on the Advantage side of the shelf, and nothing on the other side.

How to start

Have your doctor list and your prescriptions to hand, and say which town you live in. The county comes first, because it sets the Advantage list before anything else is compared. If the autumn mail is what prompted this, the Open Enrollment page covers that calendar, and the rest of what an older resident of the county might need is on the Lawrence senior resources page.

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