A friend of mine, while on leave from work, accidentally forgot to pay his monthly premiums (or premia, as Megan McArdle would say) and had his workplace-based insurance cancelled. Apparently, there’s no way to reinstate it til January. Also the 60 day grace period for COBRA has already elapsed. Does anyone have any advice on getting short-term insurance? This is in New York State.
I’m sure Richard Mayhew will know something, but despite sharing a frontpage with him, I don’t know his email address.
Chris
Yeah… why is it not okay (barring major life changes) to change health plans until the end of the year?
Steeplejack
@DougJ:
I have written him at bjdickmayhew at the yahoo.
Mary G
Maybe check healthcare.gov for a navigator who will help with ACA enrollment?
WaterGirl
Doug, I hope your friend is able to line up some insurance in the meantime, 4 months is a long time. When he does (hopefully!) suggest to him that he sign up for them to take automatically take out his premiums every month. They ding you a few dollars for the privilege, but it’s not much and well worth it.
WereBear
Health insurance based on where you work, when you work, how much you work, and if you are currently working… this is messed up.
Keith
That drop-down contact widget, upper right on the front page, actually does work you know :)
RSA
@WereBear:
Also that an innocent mistake, very easy to commit, could lead to bankruptcy or death. There are lots of such situations in life, but in healthcare we find some people and organizations against safeguards of any kind. (For contrast, imagine a group of people lobbying to remove guard rails from mountain roads, to encourage people to become better drivers.)
Steppan
@Steeplejack:
That’s a bit of an unfortunate email.
(okay, done being 12 years old)
Chris
@WereBear:
Amen.
Elizabelle
RSA: The guard rails and the mountain roads: excellent metaphor.
Ruckus
@WereBear:
Years ago when I had employees I would have gladly paid the money I paid for health insurance in taxes so that I didn’t have to spend so much time in trying to find an insurance product that provided decent coverage and didn’t screw everyone, myself included. I’m amazed that more employers don’t have the same reasoning. My current boss wants to provide insurance but less than half need it and the cost is prohibitive and with the ACA it’s a reasonable choice not to.
DougJ
@Steeplejack:
Thanks very much!
digger o'dell
So what do you do when someone doesn’t pay? You make it too easy, there’s no reason to pay.
Jack the Second
Can he engineer any of those?
BGinCHI
Don’t worry, Doug, the free market will rescue him by sending him to the afterlife early.
Gindy51
Once he does get coverage, advise him to have it set for auto withdrawal so he never misses another payment. We do that with all essential services and many can be put on a credit card instead of taking the cash out of your checking or savings account. He could set up a health only account and do it that way but he’d have to also set up an auto deposit from his main checking account to his health checking account. We did that for our daughter when she get her own insurance. She checks it monthly like all her accounts, takes 5 minutes…
Ohio Mom
There have been a couple of short-term jobs that were great fits and would have fit my schedule as a special needs moms perfectly that I didn’t pursue because they came with the option of health insurance. In both cases I would have had to choose between more-pay-but-no-insurance, or less-pay-with-insurance.
My husband’s insurance makes it absolutely clear that they will not cover a spouse who has the option of other insurance coverage, so I’d have to have taken the less-pay-with-insurance option for the portion of the year I would have been working.
But going on and off different insurance plans seemed too risky to me, I thought I could easily end up in no-coverage land during the switch-over periods. The story of Doug J’s friend reinforces my decision.
And yeah, everything everybody else has said about how pernicious employer-dependent insurance is.
WereBear
So totally the product of a Republican Mind (Nixon.) Why worry about people who don’t work full time?
bluefoot
Something similar happened to me last year in MA. I was working as a contractor administered through contracting company A, and the organization I was working for switched all the contractors to contracting company B. The problem was, I wasn’t eligible for insurance with Company B until I had worked through them for two months. I hadn’t been with Company A long enough to get COBRA. There weren’t any options but to go without insurance for the two months. Luckily, I didn’t need it for anything catastrophic, but I did end up paying for my prescriptions out of pocket.
bluefoot
Something similar happened to me a year and a half ago in MA. I was working as a contractor administered through contracting company A, and the organization I was working for switched all the contractors to contracting company B. The problem was, I wasn’t eligible for insurance with Company B until I had worked through them for two months. I hadn’t been with Company A long enough to get COBRA. There weren’t any options but to go without insurance for the two months. Luckily, I didn’t need it for anything catastrophic, but I did end up paying for my prescriptions out of pocket.
Richard mayhew
Opinion your friend is screwed.he might be able to get off exchange non subsidized coverage, not sure, or an indemnity policy, not sure. Back to vacation for me
mai naem mobile
He needs to call an independent insurance agent and see if they can find a short term plan. I have a friend who pre-ACA got hired at a small company and just missed the enrollment day for the month and she bitched enough that they found a short term plan for her for just the one month.There are some offered to expats from other countries who are here beyond just a standard vacation but not here permanently. Also depending on how valuable he is to his company can they let him go and rehire him as a new employee?
Aardvark Cheeselog
@WereBear:
Actually it started out as an end-run around wage and price controls during WWII.
mai naem mobile
The auto-withdrawal stuff is no guarantee. You still have to check they do it. I did that last year and things were okay for the first few months,then in the summer,they stopped doing the auto-withdawals and I didn’t notice. Ended up almost losing the insurance. Same thing happened to my sister this year
Roger Moore
@Chris:
They don’t want people to be able to change their health plan based on changes in their health status for fear of people gaming the system. The easiest way of preventing that is to have signup only during a limited open enrollment period, with exceptions for cases like moving or changing employment that create changes in need but are generally not health related.
Ohio Mom
@Roger Moore: Yup, only THEY are allowed to game the system. Or in the words of my sister, “Their actuaries are better than yours” (meaning, your do-it-yourself calculations). This is a fight where they always have the guns and you always only have a knife.
@Aardvark Cheeselog: I could be wrong but my recollection is that Nixon helped things along by opening the way for profit in healthcare. Guess there are so many other things Nixon is known for, that one gets overlooked.
WereBear
@Aardvark Cheeselog: Thanks. The story on Nixon.
Which, to be honest, is better than I expected. Nixon is still a scummy human being.
MazeDancer
If your friend can’t qualify for change of life event immediate enrollment, there is temporary insurance. It’s basically for accidents, emergency stuff and not going to the doctor, but it is not expensive.
Every carrier offers it. Here is United HealthCare for example: http://www.uhc.com/individual-and-family/health-insurance-plans/short-term
john fremont
I got canceled off of my insurance policy when I came off of disability last year. I elected to go on my employer’s plan and was on COBRA at the time. My employer did not get me on and I stayed on COBRA even though I received a new insurance card at the beginning of the yeat. I found our my COBRA was canceled because I had not made a payment because I thought I was back on the employer plan. In Colorado, temporary insurance plans are not sold to individuals with preexisting conditions like me once open enrollment closes on the exchanges. I went without insurance for five months until I found an indemnity policy.
Central Planning
DougJ, have him create a DBA and then he can get insurance through the Rochester Business Alliance. It’s a group plan so he’ll do better than going to an insurer directly. I did that when I had my own business here in town
betty ericson
If you bank by mail you yourself may be able to set up automatic withdrawals from your account . I do all my banking at a credit union and I am able to set up a schedule so certain recurring bills (my health insurance) are automatically paid monthly. There is also the flexibility to pay occasional bills when they come. I’m from the ww2 generation, so this has been like magic!
Raven Onthehill
@mai naem mobile: “He needs to call an independent insurance agent and see if they can find a short term plan.” Yes. If he hasn’t already, he might also talk to the people at the state Exchange and see if they have some bureaucratic workaround for him—sometimes they do.