Get Help With Medicare Coverage

Whew! Thanks for your over-whelming response to my column on the challenges of signing up for Medicare (“Living in Retirement,” Dec.).

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Some of you sympathized with my situation—often in colorful terms. “Thus began a journey into the bowels of bureaucratic mayhem,” wrote one reader. “I had to laugh because I just went through the same maze,” wrote another.

Some of you offered detailed advice on how you negotiated that maze: “I have been on Medicare for 10 years and have had at least five different Medicare Part D drug plans,” wrote one reader. Others complimented local Social Security representatives who were “excellent to work with and got the issues resolved quickly.” Some e-mails were eloquent pleas for help: “I need to know more than what my options are; I need to know how to competently choose among those options.”