This is a very important question, especially in the individual health insurance marketplace after January 1, 2014. Individual insurance carriers have revamped their products significantly to compete in this new environment and the consumer needs to be well informed when making their choice as the answer to your question will vary significantly from one insurance carrier's products to another's.
As a general rule of thumb, you can be pretty comfortable that in a life threatening emergency your insurance coverage will apply outside of your home state. Where things can get confusing and possibly expensive is when a subscriber seeks non-emergency care outside of their home state or perhaps even outside of their plan's service area within their home state.
Before enrolling in a plan you need to know if it has moved to an HMO type of model where you may have little or no coverage outside of your plan's service area (this could literally be an area encompassing several counties within your state), whether the plan has gone to a gatekeeper model where a referral from your primary care physician is required for treatment to be covered at in-network levels, or whether your chosen carrier uses an open network model where you can access their provider network any where in the nation without a referral being required.
My advice is to seek out the guidance of an experienced health insurance broker who understands how different health insurance carriers have structured their products and who can educate and guide you to the plan that best fits your needs. Please feel free to contact me for assistance in this regard.
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As a general rule of thumb, you can be pretty comfortable that in a life threatening emergency your insurance coverage will apply outside of your home state. Where things can get confusing and possibly expensive is when a subscriber seeks non-emergency care outside of their home state or perhaps even outside of their plan's service area within their home state.
Before enrolling in a plan you need to know if it has moved to an HMO type of model where you may have little or no coverage outside of your plan's service area (this could literally be an area encompassing several counties within your state), whether the plan has gone to a gatekeeper model where a referral from your primary care physician is required for treatment to be covered at in-network levels, or whether your chosen carrier uses an open network model where you can access their provider network any where in the nation without a referral being required.
My advice is to seek out the guidance of an experienced health insurance broker who understands how different health insurance carriers have structured their products and who can educate and guide you to the plan that best fits your needs. Please feel free to contact me for assistance in this regard.