Medicare Part D Drug Plans on the Emerald Coast

A Medicare Part D plan is private prescription drug coverage, added to Original Medicare or built into most Medicare Advantage plans. Medicare sets the 2027 limits on what you can be charged; each plan sets its own drug list, pharmacies and prices inside those limits, so the same prescriptions can cost more in one plan than another at your pharmacy.

Medicare’s Part D limits and dates for 2027

• Annual Enrollment Period for 2027 drug plans: October 15 to December 7, 2026, with the new plan starting January 1, 2027.
• Medicare’s 2027 cap on what you pay out of pocket for covered Part D drugs: two thousand four hundred dollars. Monthly premiums do not count toward it.
• Medicare’s 2027 limit on a drug plan’s deductible: seven hundred dollars. A plan may set a lower deductible than that, never a higher one.
• After the cap: Medicare’s rule is no copays or coinsurance on covered drugs for the rest of the year. The plan’s premium continues.
• The coverage gap, or donut hole: ended after 2024. A 2027 plan has three stages: the deductible, initial coverage, and the cap.
• Insulin a plan covers: Medicare limits what you pay to thirty-five dollars for a month’s supply, and the plan’s deductible does not apply to it.
• Adult vaccines on the federal immunization committee’s recommended list (ACIP), the shingles vaccine included: a plan must cover them without a deductible or a copay.
• The late enrollment penalty for 2027: one percent of Medicare’s base premium of forty-one dollars and thirty-three cents for each full month you went without creditable drug coverage after your first chance to join, added to your premium for as long as you have Medicare drug coverage.
• The Medicare Prescription Payment Plan: continues for 2027. If you stay in the same plan, your participation renews for 2027 unless you opt out; if you change plans, you opt in again with the new plan.
• The Part D premium stabilization demonstration: ends after 2026 (CMS, July 2026), so a plan’s own 2027 premium can move more than it has in recent years. Compare the total yearly cost, not the premium.
• Standalone drug plans on Medicare’s 2027 list for Florida: eleven.

We do not offer every plan available in your area. Currently we represent 3 organizations which offer 8 products in your area. Please contact Medicare.gov or 1-800-MEDICARE to get information on all of your options.

Can you change your drug plan this fall, and who can join one?

Anyone with Medicare Part A or Part B who lives in a plan’s service area can join a Part D plan. If you keep Original Medicare, with or without a Medicare Supplement, you buy a standalone drug plan. If you are in a Medicare Advantage plan, your drug coverage is usually part of that plan, and you change it by changing the plan. The window you are in decides when a change can start.

Your first chance: the seven months around your Medicare start

Your Initial Enrollment Period for Part D runs from three months before the month you first become eligible for Medicare, through that month, to three months after it. If you keep working past 65 with drug coverage from a current employer, you can wait, and you get two full months after the month that coverage ends to join a plan, with no penalty as long as the employer coverage was creditable.

Every fall: October 15 to December 7

Medicare’s Annual Enrollment Period is the one scheduled chance each year for anyone with Medicare to join, switch or drop a drug plan, with the change starting January 1. For a Medicare Supplement client it is the only scheduled window of the year, because Medicare’s January-to-March window is for people already in a Medicare Advantage plan and does not let you change a standalone drug plan.

Other times the door opens

Medicare gives a special enrollment period when you move out of your plan’s service area, when your plan ends or leaves your county (December 8 through the end of February for a plan that is not renewing for 2027), when you lose creditable coverage through no fault of your own, when you qualify for Extra Help, and in a few other situations, each with its own clock. A plan that Medicare rates five stars can be joined once between December 8 and November 30 of the following year. Outside a window, you wait for the next October.

What Medicare sets, and what each plan sets

Medicare sets the outer limits: the yearly cap, the most a plan can charge as a deductible, the insulin limit, the vaccine rule, the penalty, and a standard benefit that every plan has to be at least as good as. Most of what you feel at the counter is set by the plan, inside those limits.

• Its monthly premium, and its deductible, at or below Medicare’s limit.
• Its formulary, the list of drugs it covers, and the tier it puts each drug on. Two plans that both cover your drug can put it on different tiers, and the tier decides your copay or coinsurance.
• Its pharmacy network, and which pharmacies it treats as preferred. The same drug on the same plan can cost one amount at a preferred pharmacy and another at a standard one.
• Its rules on a drug: prior authorization, step therapy, quantity limits, and whether mail order is available.

That is the whole reason a comparison is worth an hour. Nothing about Medicare changes from one plan to the next. The plan’s own choices do.

How we compare the total yearly cost of a drug plan

The premium alone tells you very little. A plan with a lower premium can carry a higher deductible and a higher tier for the one drug you fill every month, and a plan with a higher premium can come out ahead once every fill is counted. So we compare the total for the year, in four steps.

1. Your drug list: each prescription, its dose, and how often you fill it. The bottles or your pharmacy’s printout work.
2. Your pharmacy, plus a second one if you spend part of the year away or want mail order.
3. Medicare’s Plan Finder at medicare.gov/plan-compare, which prices your exact list in every plan sold in your county for the year: premium, deductible, and what each fill costs at each stage, at each pharmacy you choose. The 2027 prices are in it now.
4. The total for the year, read against the three things that change the answer: a drug on a higher tier in one plan than another, a pharmacy that is preferred in one plan and standard in another, and a drug one plan does not cover at all.

We go over that comparison with you, note what we found in your file, and offer to do it again every fall, because plans change their drug lists, tiers and pharmacies every January 1, and the notice you get is the Annual Notice of Change that has to reach you by September 30. A plan that was right for 2026 is not automatically right for 2027.

The penalty, and the coverage that counts as creditable

Medicare adds a late enrollment penalty to your premium if you go 63 days or more in a row without Part D or other creditable drug coverage after your Initial Enrollment Period ends. Creditable means coverage expected to pay, on average, at least as much as Medicare’s standard drug benefit; a plan that is creditable has to tell you so in writing each year, and that letter is worth keeping. For 2027 the penalty is one percent of Medicare’s base premium of forty-one dollars and thirty-three cents for each full month without coverage, rounded to the nearest ten cents, and it stays on your premium for as long as you have Medicare drug coverage. Twenty months without coverage, for example, adds about eight dollars and thirty cents a month in 2027, and the amount is refigured each year against that year’s base premium.

Around Eglin, Hurlburt and Tyndall we see a lot of TRICARE For Life, and many retirees here fill their prescriptions through the VA. As of October 2026 the Department of Defense states that TRICARE pharmacy coverage is creditable, and the VA states the same about its drug coverage, so with either one a Part D plan is a choice rather than a requirement: you can join later without a penalty as long as that coverage continues. Federal employee health plans and many employer plans say the same in their yearly notice.

Where you fill matters: your pharmacy, mail order, and summers away

Many standalone drug plans have pharmacy networks that reach well beyond Florida, and the plan’s documents say whether yours does, so a sunbird who spends June through September in the mountains can often keep filling under the same plan. The question is whether the pharmacy up there is preferred or standard in that plan, which can change what a fill costs. Mail order through the plan, where the plan offers it, usually covers maintenance drugs, and a ninety-day fill at a preferred pharmacy before you leave covers most of the rest. If you live on 30A year-round, the comparison is simpler: we price your list at the pharmacy you actually use, whether that is in Santa Rosa Beach, Miramar Beach, Freeport, Destin or Panama City Beach, rather than at an average.

Drugs you get at the doctor’s office are not Part D

A drug you pick up at a pharmacy is generally Part D. A drug a doctor gives you in the office, in an infusion suite or in a hospital outpatient setting is generally Part B, with its own twenty percent coinsurance and no yearly cap, and that is the share a Medicare Supplement helps pay, by plan letter. Our Medicare Supplement page walks through which drugs fall on which side. For a Part D comparison the practical point is simple: a drug your doctor administers will not show up in the Plan Finder, because it is not a Part D drug.

A standalone drug plan and Medicare Advantage do not mix

If you are in a Medicare Advantage plan that includes drug coverage, which most do, you cannot add a standalone drug plan on top of it. Joining one ends your Medicare Advantage plan and returns you to Original Medicare, with narrow exceptions for a few plan types that carry no drug coverage. The reverse is also true: if you leave Medicare Advantage for Original Medicare and a supplement, you need a standalone drug plan from the day the old plan ends, or the 63-day clock starts running. Our Medicare Advantage page covers how those plans are structured and when you can change them.

If your Medicare Advantage plan is ending December 31

Several Medicare Advantage plans sold in Walton, Okaloosa and Bay counties in 2026 are not offered here for 2027. If yours is one of them and you return to Original Medicare, you have a special enrollment period from December 8 through the end of February to choose a standalone drug plan, and the Medicare Supplement side has its own guaranteed-issue window. Pick the drug plan by December 31 so it starts January 1 with no gap; a plan chosen in January starts February 1. Our guide to what to do when your Medicare Advantage plan is ending puts the dates in order.

The Medicare Prescription Payment Plan

Since 2025, anyone with Part D can ask the plan to spread what they owe at the pharmacy across the rest of the calendar year as monthly bills from the plan, instead of paying it at the counter. It does not lower the total and it charges no interest; it changes when you pay. It helps most when a large cost lands early in the year, for example an expensive brand-name drug filled in January. You sign up through your plan. If you used it in 2026 and keep the same plan, it renews for 2027 unless you tell the plan to stop; if you move to a different plan, you ask the new plan to opt you in. Nothing about the payment plan changes Medicare’s 2027 cap of two thousand four hundred dollars.

Extra Help with drug costs

Medicare’s Extra Help program lowers what people with limited income and resources pay for a drug plan, and qualifying for it opens a special enrollment period of its own. You apply through Social Security, online at ssa.gov, by phone at 1-800-772-1213, or at a local office by appointment, and we can walk through the application with you.

The plans we can enroll you in, and the ones we cannot

Some drug plans sold in Florida do not accept enrollments through independent agents. We still price them in the comparison, because the comparison is about your cost, not ours. If the plan that costs you the least for 2027 is one we cannot enroll you in, we tell you, you enroll yourself at Medicare.gov or by calling 1-800-MEDICARE, and we note it in your file. If it is a plan offered by one of the companies we represent, we enroll you from the office.

Bring your drug list; we run the comparison with you

Part D questions go to Chris Jayne, Trista Cordell or Garrett Fuller. All three are licensed and work from our office at 4821 US Highway 98 W, Suite 103, Santa Rosa Beach, FL 32459, open 9 to 4, Monday through Thursday.

Call the office at 850-622-5283 and ask for Chris Jayne, Trista Cordell, or Garrett Fuller, Fuller Insurance LLC, Florida license L039483. Bring your Medicare card, your prescriptions with doses, and the name of the pharmacy you use most, and we will go over which window you are in and what each plan sold in your county would cost you for 2027.

When you share your information with us, a licensed Fuller Insurance agent will contact you.

Dollar figures on this page are Medicare’s 2027 limits and carry their year; each plan’s own premium, deductible, drug list and pharmacy terms are in that plan’s 2027 documents, and your plan’s documents control. Enrollment rules are federal and apply to every plan.

Fuller Insurance is not connected with or endorsed by the U.S. government or the federal Medicare program.