Medicare guidance is only as good as the people behind it. Here is who writes this site, who answers the phone, and where the line between the two sits.
This is the part most sites blur, so we will be direct: the licensed agents you speak with work at partner agencies, not for us. Nobody on our staff takes your call, discusses a specific plan with you, or enrolls you in coverage.
That distinction matters for you. A licensed agent is bound by state licensing rules and by the Medicare marketing regulations that govern plan enrollment, and is the only person permitted to discuss specific plan benefits with you or enroll you in coverage. We write the educational material; they handle everything plan-specific.
We require the agencies we work with to route each caller to an agent licensed in that caller's state. Those agents do not work for us and we are not on the call, so we cannot promise you what any one of them does. If you want to check, ask for the agent's name, National Producer Number, and the states they hold a license in — a licensed agent will give you all three, and your state's department of insurance will confirm them.
If an agent ever tells you something that contradicts what you read here, trust the licensed agent on plan specifics — and please tell us, because it means our page needs fixing.
If anyone on our staff holds an insurance license, that person will be named on this page with their National Producer Number and the states it covers, so you can verify it independently through your state's department of insurance.
Holding a license does not change what we do. Nobody here takes your call, discusses a specific plan with you, or enrolls you in coverage — the licensed agents you reach work at partner agencies. If that ever changes, this page changes first.
Research and editorial
Our editorial team researches and writes every guide on this site, working from the CMS Medicare & You handbook, CMS fact sheets, and Social Security Administration program rules. We are researchers and writers, not insurance agents: we explain how the Medicare program works, and we leave plan-specific advice to the licensed agents we connect readers with.
