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How to Get Health Insurance without a Job

How to Get Health Insurance without a Job

The goal of health insurance coverage is to ensure that reasonable and affordable medical care is made available to people. Legislations such as the ACA (Affordable Care Act) make this possible. Depending on a person’s status in various ramifications, there are insurance plans made available with varying benefits and costs that come with them.

For example, unemployed people are not left out of having reasonable and affordable insurance coverage. We will discuss an insurance plan that unemployed people are eligible for in this IST Health welfare article. Especially if you have cut ties with your employer, it is in your best interest to find out more in this article.

The COBRA Act

COBRA is one of those federal Acts that is born out of the plan to ensure unemployed people still have healthcare insurance coverage after cutting ties with their employers. The goal is to ensure that the unemployed individual (and possibly the family) don’t stop enjoying health insurance services that are applied while on the job. This is to go on for a short period and is not supposed to be a life-long thing.

So, the involuntary or voluntary loss of an individual’s job should not stop the individual (and possibly the family) from enjoying the help that healthcare insurance services should offer. Eligibility for plans based on the COBRA Act is hinged on some rules. These rules as well as the cost are discussed below:

The COBRA Act

Loss of Employer’s Health-Sponsored Insurance Plan under Qualifying Circumstances

Some of the circumstances that qualify a person to enjoy this health insurance coverage-based Act include:

  • A covered employee’s entitlement to Medicare benefits as hinged on the pertinent Social Security Act law
  • Covered employee’s death which can qualify dependents in the family
  • Working hours reduction or termination of job appointment for reasons other than gross misconduct
  • Legal separation or even divorce of a covered employee

These are some of them as it concerns qualifying circumstances.

Election Notice from Employer

COBRA-based plans will not kick off automatically, as they have to be initiated. The employer kicks off the process by sending an election notice to this effect. This is within 45 days after the circumstance.

The Decision to Use COBRA-Based Healthcare Insurance Coverage

The next step would be to choose to enroll back. This has to be done no later than 60 days after getting your employer’s election notice.

You Take Charge of the Cost

Now that ties have been severed between you and your employer, you pay for the cost of the COBRA-based health insurance coverage. This is even as you enjoy pretty much the same policy as before the qualifying circumstance.

You would therefore have to take care of the premiums, deductibles, coinsurances, insurance cards bill, and even out-of-pocket expenses. If you are financially limited by your present low income or other income concerns, you may have to explore other options.

Thankfully, your status makes you qualify for the special open enrollment period. This means that your application for eligible and suitable plans in the insurance marketplace can be done even outside of the open enrollment for health insurance.

Medicaid – which offers reasonable subsidies; could be one of the options you can consider. Although a federal program, it is mostly state regulated. So, you have to be well aware of how it works in states (especially your state) to see about this. You can visit your state’s healthcare.gov platform for more information about this.

Term for Initial Premium Payment

You have to pay your initial premium for this health insurance coverage no later than 45 days. It is after then that you are fully on board to enjoy the benefits of this health insurance coverage. Speaking of benefits, this also includes the retroactive coverage that it could offer.

Other posts in the welfare section of this website can help out. For example, you can find out how much health insurance costs per month on average.

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