If you are relying on the ACA individual health insurance market for your health insurance, the Open Enrollment Period (OEP) for Healthcare.gov ends on December 15th.
If you are in a state that runs their own exchange, all of the OEPs go at least another week, but the 15th is a wonderful time to get your choice in.
I highly recommend that you go to your account on Healthcare.gov today and look. Look at your options. Look at any reporting requirements such as a request for attestation that you’ve filed your taxes. Look at what you are automatically crosswalked into.
Picking insurance is a tough decision matrix. It is easier when you have some time and the ability to ask for a little bit of help either in comments here, or with a navigator or a broker. Use your time. You have a smidge more than a week.
And once you pick your plan, get your payment in immediately. Some research that I’ll soon be jazzed to share with you all find that quite a few people get tripped up between selecting and starting plans because their payment never arrived to activate the insurance policy. Picking today and then having three weeks to get your check in the mail, your credit card entered online, an auto-draft set-up or carrier pigeons resurrected and trained gives you more chances to get it right than picking on the 15th and hoping to get everything set up by the 31st.
So go online and get your health insurance for next year before everyone else slams the site.
p.a.
Deepstate sitting on tRump’s beautiful alternate plan!?
Ascap_scab
I went to MNsure and because I made too much money this year, I don’t qualify for subsidies. Now that I’m unemployed, the cheapest, no-coverage bronze plan is $900/mo. YIKES! Who can afford that?
ProfDamatu
My insurer (with whom I’ve been for four years) seems to have finally figured out how to efficiently pull information from the exchange website and act accordingly. Two years ago, it took three phone calls to verify that they had my info and figure out how to make that first premium payment such that it would be credited properly (and not end up being counted as an overpayment for December). Last year, one phone call. This year, I received my insurance cards for 2021 less than two weeks after making my selection on Healthcare.gov – confirmation that they’ve got my info, and at least a month earlier than ever before! Now, they did charge me double my usual premium for December, but I count it as progress that they’ve already figured out that I’m still a customer for next year.