Miss Out on Health Insurance Open Enrollment?

Health Insurance Open Enrollment: As a record number of Americans are losing their jobs due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, the number of people who are finding themselves suddenly uninsured or underinsured is spiking in tandem, setting the stage for a healthcare crisis that could outlast the virus by months, and even years.

Sadly, layoffs are becoming more and more common in just about every sector of the workforce and very few employers have the resources to maintain health benefits while they’re struggling to keep the ship above water. Even people who do not have employer plans are having trouble keeping up with their premiums without their regular paychecks coming in.

The result for Colorado and America as a whole is the same: record numbers of people are deciding to go without health insurance altogether, usually because they feel like they have no other option.

Listen up: You do have an option.

If you are currently uninsured because you either lost your job or were unable to sign up for coverage during open enrollment (which ended April 30th) there are still ways to either get you fully insured or protected by an alternative, low-host health sharing program.

If You’ve Been Laid Off, You Qualify for a Special Health Insurance Open Enrollment Period

Amidst the ongoing lockdown, Colorado is predicted by analysts to lose more than 250,000 jobs by the summer season. That’s a pretty staggering number to think about, especially when you consider that it is on top of the roughly 79,000 people that were unemployed in the state before the downturn began.

The takeaway here is not that the world is coming to an end, but rather the fact that being uninsured or under-insured at the moment is not uncommon. In other words, you’re not alone.

Fortunately, if you are one of the many Coloradoans who suddenly finds themselves without an employer-sponsored plan, you are eligible for a special enrollment period in which you can sign up for a plan now, without waiting for Open Enrollment to begin again in December.

In addition, if you have lost your job (and therefore your income) then you might currently qualify for valuable insurance subsidies that you were perhaps not qualified for the last time that you were buying insurance. These subsidies are perhaps the only way that an insurance plan under the Affordable Care Act will be, well, affordable.

Do I Qualify for a Special Health Insurance Open Enrollment Period?

Under the ACA, there are a number of qualifying “life events” that make a person eligible for a special enrollment period:

• • You lost your group health insurance sometime in the last 60 days, or, you expect to lose it in the next 60 days
  • You got divorced or married
  • Had a baby or adopted a child
  • Moved outside of your plan’s current area
  • Experienced a change in household income

As you can imagine, the COVID-19 pandemic and the associated quarantines will greatly increase the number of Coloradoans who either lose their group insurance or experience a change in household income.

You can see the full list of qualified life events at the ColoHealth website, of you can give us a call and one of our expert team members will walk you through it.

Still Can’t Afford an ACA Health Insurance Plan?

If you are unable to qualify for an ACA subsidy or if you are one of the growing number of people who are discovering that traditional health insurance, quite simply, is not a good fit, then it is time to consider enrolling in a Health Care Sharing Program.

First things first: Healthshare plans are not operated by insurance companies. For many of us, this is reason enough to make the switch, but the real advantage over “regular” insurance (and especially ACA plans) is the significantly lower costs.

In fact, some of the most popular health care sharing plans that we offer start as low as $99 per month, which is less than 25% the cost of the average unsubsidized ACA plan.

Is Health Care Sharing Right for Me?

The remarkable monthly cost savings of a health care sharing program do come with some caveats, meaning that they are not the best idea for everybody. For instance, most health sharing plans do not cover pre-existing conditions without a significant waiting period, and they tend to lack coverage for preventative care and birth control, both of which are essential benefits under the ACA.

Know Your Options

Going without any form of health insurance is never a good idea, but in times like these it is even more irresponsible and can potentially make it even more difficult to financially recover from the global crisis that we are all facing. 

If you are interested in finding out what kind of subsidized insurance plans are still available to you, or if you are interested in bucking the insurance altogether in favor of a low-cost health sharing program, our team of insurance experts can get you there fast.

Call us today, or visit ColoHealth for a free quote.