Sumber : Manggahijau.com
How to Sign Up for Health Insurance This Year
Believe it or not, the Affordable Care Act is still in effect. Most people who don’t have coverage through work can buy a plan off the Marketplace (the so-called “Obamacare plans”) for $100/month or less, starting November 1. Signing up is trickier this year, though, so we’ve put together a guide with the most important things to know.
Do I need to care about open enrollment?
Open enrollment is the time when anybody can enroll in a health insurance plan for any reason. It’s open to everyone, see? The other kind of enrollment is special enrollment, which applies to the rest of the year. Life events like getting married or having a baby open up an enrollment window just for your family. Losing insurance coverage and moving your residence also qualify; read up here to learn more about what events qualify.
If you get insurance through your work, you’ll have to ask your HR people about enrollment periods. (They probably also have an open enrollment for employees around this time of year.) Employer provided insurance is pretty straightforward: you have the options they say you have, and the price is whatever your employer says you pay. Usually your employer picks up part of the tab, so your out-of-pocket cost is lower than if you bought a plan yourself.
If you don’t like your employer’s coverage, you can shop around. It’s rarely a good deal, though. You’ll almost always pay full price, since your employer isn’t kicking in, and you’re not usually eligible for subsidies if you’re turning down an employer plan.
If you don’t have employer provided coverage, or if you’d still like to check out your other options, the rest of this guide is for you.
Can’t I just ignore this and get the same plan as last year?
Theoretically, yes. But it’s always a good idea to comparison shop, and this year it’s especially risky to leave your insurance coverage to the whims of auto-enrollment. Here are the two big caveats:
Your old plan might not exist anymore. The system will try to enroll you in a similar plan, but that could end up being something totally different than what you have now. The new plan may not include your favorite doctor in their network, for example.
It will be too late to change your mind. This year, by the time auto-enrollment happens, open enrollment will be over. So if you don’t like the new plan, you’re stuck with it.
When do I sign up?
Open enrollment is November 1 to December 15, 2018 in most states. That’s a much shorter period than last year, when you could sign up any time before the end of January. Some states have an extended open enrollment period this year. They all still start on November 1, and here are their end dates.
California: January 31
Colorado: January 12
Connecticut: January 22
District of Columbia: January 31
Massachusetts: January 23
Minnesota: January 14
New York: January 31
Rhode Island: December 31
Washington: January 15
Most people haven’t gotten the memo about the new dates, so tell your friends. You can also find shareable info cards with these dates in English and Spanish here.
So, anytime in that window?
No. Sign up early. There’s usually a surge in signups at the tail end of open enrollment, so you want to beat the crowd.
If you need free, in-person help to sign up, it’s especially important to be early. Funding for these “navigator” services has been cut, plus the shorter enrollment period also means they’re already likely to be swamped. So if you or a family member might need assistance, make an appointment ASAP. (You can look up local assisters and brokers here. Community organizations will also be running their own assistance programs, so ask around—your local library would be a good place to start.)
One last caveat: the computer systems behind open enrollment need weekly maintenance, and that maintenance has been scheduled for midnight to noon most Sunday mornings. If this concerns you, check out last year’s downtime schedule.The scheduled downtime was similar, but sometimes it ended early. On the other hand, one Sunday wasn’t supposed to have downtime at all, but ended up with seven hours anyway. Like we said—sign up early.
How Much Is This Gonna Cost Me?
This is the good news! Most people get a substantial subsidy when they buy insurance on the Marketplace (healthcare.gov or your state’s equivalent). The exact rates will vary, but there are two different types of subsidy that can lower your costs. A lot of people buy off exchange, or skip getting insured at all, because they don’t realize that they qualify. Here are the two kinds of subsidies
Advance premium tax credits reduce your monthly payment. They are available for people making 100 to 400 percent of the federal poverty level. That upper limit is a modified adjusted gross income of $48,240 if you’re single and $98,400 for a family of four. (Numbers are different for Alaska and Hawaii; check here for specifics.) Here is the range for different family sizes:
Cost sharing reductions mean you can buy a silver plan but pay less in deductibles and copays than a silver plan would normally offer. You’re eligible for these if your income is between 100 and 250 percent of the federal poverty level, so the cap here is $30,150 if you’re single and $61,500 for a family of four. Again, these numbers are different for Alaska and Hawaii. Here’s the chart for this range if you live in the continental US:
If you fall under these upper limits, you can get cheaper insurance than you probably realize. Go to healthcare.gov or your state’s equivalent to find out how much you would pay. Most people who qualify pay less than $100/month, and in some cases insurance can even be free.
Silver Plans Are Weird This Year
So, you may remember that the White House announced they would...no they wouldn’t...no they would...wait HAHA they wouldn’t! pay the CSR payments that make those low-deductible silver plans possible. So we’re all screwed, right? Amazingly...maybe not.
That’s because insurers are required by law to provide those low-deductible plans, whether they get the money or not. (They can decide to pull out of the market entirely if they really want to avoid offering these plans, but so far they don’t seem to be doing that.) The question now is whether your monthly payments will go up because of this.
If you qualify for advance premium tax credits (which most people buying on the Marketplace do), your monthly payments probably won’t change much because the subsidy grows to cover the difference.
What if you don’t qualify for those subsidies? Well, what happens now depends on how your state decides to handle the situation. Charles Gaba at ACASignups.net, who does an amazing amount of calculation and policy analysis on this kind of thing, and he’s come up with the lists we cite below:
In Alaska, Arkansas, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri, Nebraska, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Oregon, South Dakota, and Tennessee, prices have been hiked on all silver plans. If you don’t get a subsidy and were hoping to buy a silver plan, check out bronze and gold instead. That’s right—gold might be cheaper than silver.
In Alabama, California, Connecticut, Florida, Hawaii, Illinois, Idaho, Maine, Maryland, Minnesota, Nevada, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina Utah, Virginia, Washington, Wisconsin, and Wyoming, prices are only higher on silver plans offered on the Marketplace. If you don’t qualify for a subsidy, look up the insurer’s website, and see if they’ll sell you a silver plan directly. It will be cheaper than the Marketplace version of that plan.
In Colorado, Delaware, Indiana, Oklahoma, and West Virginia, premiums will be higher across the board. Sorry.
In the District of Columbia, North Dakota, and Vermont, there’s no premium increase to account for the lack of CSR payments. Here, it’s the insurance companies that take the hit, rather than consumers or the federal government. Keep an eye out: this is where insurers are likely to pull out of the market. On the other hand, state regulators could change their mind and implement one of the strategies above.
What’s happening with politics, though?
A lot, but it doesn’t matter right now. There’s a bipartisan bill aiming to restore CSR payments permanently; then there’s a Republican-led bill that would fund CSRs while also repealing parts of the ACA. Also, there’s a tax reform bill that could involve elements of ACA repeal.
Whatever passes, it’s too late to affect what you pay for 2018 insurance, or what terms you get in return. Any legislative changes would only apply to 2019 and beyond. Fingers crossed.
Source : vitals.lifehacker.com
