Losing Coverage and California Health Insurance
What if you lose coverage either through employment or for some other reason? How does that affect your health insurance options? One of the few bright spots in that situation is that we may be able to not only enroll, but with a large tax credit to bring down the cost. Let's see if you may qualify.
The are two areas to focus on after losing health insurance:
- Special enrollment status which allows you to enroll immediately regardless of health
- Changing income status and its effect on tax credits
We'll look at both.
Special Enrollment due to loss of coverage
If you lose health insurance coverage, you should be eligible to enroll in individual family coverage right away. We need to enroll within 60 days of the last date of prior coverage.
The big benefit is our possible effective date.
Our effective date may be as early as the following 1st of the month regardless of when we enroll during the prior month. Good news!
The better news deals with tax credits.
Most people lose coverage due to losing a job. Obviously, this also impacts our income estimate for this year. That may qualify you for a tax credit to bring down your insurance costs significantly.
If your new income estimate is less than $46K for the year (higher for larger households), call us immediately at 800-320-6269
What about Cobra coverage versus the individual family options?
Let's look at how to compare Cobra options with the new Individual Family plans. Some key take away which we can help you compare.
- Cobra tends to be very expensive especially if we can qualify for a tax credit
- Cobra plans tend to have larger networks of doctors than individual/family
- Individual Family plans allow us to re-evaluate health needs and change benefit levels from what was offered by the Cobra plan
Again, we're happy to help you compare the two options and there's no cost for our services. If Cobra makes more sense, we'll gladly recommend that option.
The main take away is that there are now large tax credits to help pay for health insurance premiums and loss of coverage allows us to evaluate these options and enroll if they make sense.
For most people, the significant premium savings is the deal breaker regardless of more narrow networks since income constraints usually accompany a loss of coverage.
In 5 minutes, we can quickly narrow down the best approach.
You can always cancel month to month if other health insurance options become available.
You can run your Health Plan Quote here to view rates and plans side by side from the major carriers...Free.
Again, there is absolutely no cost to you for our services. Call 800-320-6269 Today!