Regional Marketing Director, Capital Choice Financial Group,
The answer is yes with conditions. A person can only switch an ACA qualified plan during open enrollment which is Nov. 15th to Feb 15th. However, a person can switch to another unqualified or alternative plan from the ACA plans at ay time if he or she is willing to pay a penalty to the govt. for choosing a non-qualified plan. Incidentally, many of my clients choose to be insured under a plan outside of the govt. plans to either save premiums or just because they don't like the Obamacare plans offered. My company, The Hinch Financial Group, offers a great alternative plan to Obamacare that is really catching fire in South Carolina. It has one of the strongest PPO networks, flexible choices, and a much lower premium. If anyone is interested in learning more please call me at 843-450-9879 or visit my website.
No, not really. If you are talking about the individual health insurance market then your freedom of movement has been severely restricted by the Affordable Care Act (ObamaCare). So, outside of the annual open enrollment period each year you can only change your health insurance coverage if you experience a change of life status event or special election period as defined under ObamaCare. Some examples are getting married or divorced, having a child or moving to another state or outside your current carrier's service area in your state. Similar restrictions apply if you are covered under a group health plan that offers multiple options or one of the new private health insurance exchanges that some companies are moving to.
An increasingly common situation that many consumers are being or will be faced with is finding out that their favorite physician is no longer participating in the provider network of the health insurance plan they enrolled in. Cancelling your coverage to switch to a new insurance carrier in mid-year that does have your doctor as an in-network provider won't meet the criteria for a change of life status event or a special election period. You could cancel your old coverage but you would have to wait until the next open enrollment period and the first of the year to get new individual health insurance.
Failure to pay your monthly insurance premium is also not a qualifying event and can leave you out in the cold until the next enrollment period so don't think about that as a strategy to change insurance carriers in mid-stream. While this was tied into a continuation of coverage under COBRA issue, I recently witnessed a heartbreaking example of this situation.
I received a frantic call from the girlfriend of a man who has terminal cancer. At first she was unsure as to his last day of being covered under his employer's plan and whether he had continued his coverage under the Federal COBRA continuation guidelines. In fact, the initial information she gave me was that he had not continued his group coverage and was still within the 60-day window that a person has to purchase individual coverage after losing their employer based coverage. If this had been the case, even though the man was being treated for terminal cancer I would have been able to enroll him in major medical coverage that would have had to cover his care immediately. After digging into this man's situation more deeply we discovered that he had elected to continue his coverage under his former employer's plan, had paid the first month's premium by check but had then failed to make his second month's premium payment and had his COBRA coverage cancelled due to non-payment. The fact that this man was undergoing intensive chemo & radiation therapy and being given massive doses of pain medications made it understandable as to how he missed making that second premium payment but that didn't stop the COBRA plan administrator from terminating him for non-payment. Unfortunately, as cancellation of coverage for non-payment of premium is not a qualifying event the individual major medical carriers were within their rights to decline him for coverage until the next open enrollment period and coverage effective January 1, 2015 at the earliest. This has left the man uninsured at the worst possible time and has his friends and family raising money for his care. If he is still alive by the first of the year I'll be able to get him coverage but his life expectancy is not that great but the bills he is accumulating are.
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An increasingly common situation that many consumers are being or will be faced with is finding out that their favorite physician is no longer participating in the provider network of the health insurance plan they enrolled in. Cancelling your coverage to switch to a new insurance carrier in mid-year that does have your doctor as an in-network provider won't meet the criteria for a change of life status event or a special election period. You could cancel your old coverage but you would have to wait until the next open enrollment period and the first of the year to get new individual health insurance.
Failure to pay your monthly insurance premium is also not a qualifying event and can leave you out in the cold until the next enrollment period so don't think about that as a strategy to change insurance carriers in mid-stream. While this was tied into a continuation of coverage under COBRA issue, I recently witnessed a heartbreaking example of this situation.
I received a frantic call from the girlfriend of a man who has terminal cancer. At first she was unsure as to his last day of being covered under his employer's plan and whether he had continued his coverage under the Federal COBRA continuation guidelines. In fact, the initial information she gave me was that he had not continued his group coverage and was still within the 60-day window that a person has to purchase individual coverage after losing their employer based coverage. If this had been the case, even though the man was being treated for terminal cancer I would have been able to enroll him in major medical coverage that would have had to cover his care immediately. After digging into this man's situation more deeply we discovered that he had elected to continue his coverage under his former employer's plan, had paid the first month's premium by check but had then failed to make his second month's premium payment and had his COBRA coverage cancelled due to non-payment. The fact that this man was undergoing intensive chemo & radiation therapy and being given massive doses of pain medications made it understandable as to how he missed making that second premium payment but that didn't stop the COBRA plan administrator from terminating him for non-payment. Unfortunately, as cancellation of coverage for non-payment of premium is not a qualifying event the individual major medical carriers were within their rights to decline him for coverage until the next open enrollment period and coverage effective January 1, 2015 at the earliest. This has left the man uninsured at the worst possible time and has his friends and family raising money for his care. If he is still alive by the first of the year I'll be able to get him coverage but his life expectancy is not that great but the bills he is accumulating are.