08/27/2026
How to help a parent review their coverage without taking over.
The hardest part of this is almost never the insurance. It's the dynamic. Nobody wants to be managed, least of all by their own child, and the distance between ""I'll help you look at this"" and ""I've decided this for you"" is shorter than it sounds. So a lot of families skip the conversation entirely and hope it works out.
Here's a way through it that keeps you useful and keeps them in charge.
1. Start with a question, not a recommendation. ""How has your plan been working for you?"" is a better opening than anything you could suggest.
2. Ask for the Annual Notice of Change. It's the letter that arrives by late September listing everything the plan is doing differently next year. It looks like junk mail. It is not.
3. Write one list: every prescription, every doctor, every pharmacy. One page. This is the single most useful thing you can do, and it takes twenty minutes.
4. Check the list against the plan — not the plan against a memory. Memory is where most of the errors come from, on both sides.
5. Offer to sit in on the review. To be in the room, not to run it. If you're on a call together, let them answer the questions.
6. Let them decide. Your job is clarity, not control.
Most people don't want their choices made for them. They want company while they make them.
Print this, or send it to your brother or sister. One of you will end up doing this, and it goes better as a plan than as a surprise.
One related note. If you'd rather start with your own household paperwork instead of theirs, Naomi Catterton shared a Family Legacy Checklist on her page this Monday — hers covers your documents, this one covers your parents' coverage. Between the two, both generations are accounted for.
Who will you be doing this with this year?