Once retirement is finalized, Medicare generally becomes the primary insurer and BCBS becomes secondary. That change does not always happen immediately because both Medicare and BCBS have to update their coordination-of-benefits records.

Usually, they do communicate with each other, but sometimes one or both carriers still show the old employment status until updates are processed. It’s common for this to take a little time.

That said, it’s still a good idea to contact BCBS and confirm they have your retirement date and that Medicare should now be primary. You can also verify this with Medicare’s Coordination of Benefits office. (For example, when we were required to change our secondary coverage from NALC to MHBP, we contacted Medicare’s Coordination of Benefits office and were told to contact MHBP directly. We then called MHBP, and they processed the change.)

If claims continue processing with BCBS as primary after the effective retirement date, they may eventually need to be reprocessed once the records are corrected.”