The answer to your question will vary depending upon the health insurance company you are enrolling with, whether your coverage is through an employer or is individual health insurance, and increasingly with the time of year you are enrolling.
If you are enrolling through your employer's plan then it is reasonable to expect that it will take 5 to 10 business days for you to receive your new member packet with your physical ID card. Many group health insurance carriers have the functionality through their web sites for your HR person or for you to be able to print out a temporary ID card within 24 to 48 hours of their receiving and processing your enrollment form.
For persons taking out individual health insurance it is usually around 10 business days after receiving your application that your new member kit with your ID card will be mailed to you. Some individual carriers also provide for the production of temporary ID cards from their web site after your enrollment form has been processed.
When an individual is enrolling in individual health insurance during the annual open enrollment period you should understand that our nation has now gone to a system that forces people to enroll in a prescribed time period each year. Millions of people are being processed during this period and it strains the capacity of even the largest health insurance companies to process this volume of enrollments that are coming from both the government based health insurance marketplaces and from direct enrollments. While the process should get better with time, the first year's open enrollment left much to be desired from an efficiency standpoint and the consumer should be prepared for longer waiting times to get their ID cards following open enrollment. In 2014 waiting times of well over a month were not uncommon and in some instances the waiting periods some people experienced were even longer.
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If you are enrolling through your employer's plan then it is reasonable to expect that it will take 5 to 10 business days for you to receive your new member packet with your physical ID card. Many group health insurance carriers have the functionality through their web sites for your HR person or for you to be able to print out a temporary ID card within 24 to 48 hours of their receiving and processing your enrollment form.
For persons taking out individual health insurance it is usually around 10 business days after receiving your application that your new member kit with your ID card will be mailed to you. Some individual carriers also provide for the production of temporary ID cards from their web site after your enrollment form has been processed.
When an individual is enrolling in individual health insurance during the annual open enrollment period you should understand that our nation has now gone to a system that forces people to enroll in a prescribed time period each year. Millions of people are being processed during this period and it strains the capacity of even the largest health insurance companies to process this volume of enrollments that are coming from both the government based health insurance marketplaces and from direct enrollments. While the process should get better with time, the first year's open enrollment left much to be desired from an efficiency standpoint and the consumer should be prepared for longer waiting times to get their ID cards following open enrollment. In 2014 waiting times of well over a month were not uncommon and in some instances the waiting periods some people experienced were even longer.