Are you among those many Americans who have health insurance tied to their job? Then losing that job will make you devoid of the important health insurance coverage. It will make you highly vulnerable by incurring strong medical bills in the midst of toughest financial time of your life.
There are many other options available than you are aware of, which will give you relief when you would lose health cover;
- If you are married then you can seek coverage in your spouse’s plan. As soon as you lose job, you become dependent on other family members. So you can cover yourself in the health insurance plan provided by their employer.
- If you are not able to get insurance in your family member’s plan, then search whether you can cover yourself in Consolidated Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act (COBRA). It gives you right to continue in health insurance plan you had at your former employer. However there are some limitations involved in COBRA which will not covered you, if your employer had less than 20 employees. You can’t get COBRA if you had lost the job because of misconduct in company.
- Find out whether your state has any programs or laws that can assist you. Some states have a rule of providing Mini-COBRA, which covers you even if your employer has less than 20 employees. Sometimes your firm may have closed abruptly because of excessive debt; in such a case your state may give you facility of purchasing policy as an individual from your company.
- If you don’t have COBRA or Mini-COBRA option to use, then make confirm whether you can avail cover under another federal law named HIPPA. It is Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act which will protect you under health insurance, in case you had health coverage of at least 18 months which does not include any gap of 63 days or more than that. Apart from this, the last day of your insurance coverage must be through a job, to cover you under HIPPA.
As per recent statistics, around 46 million Americans are living without health insurance coverage. As the economic condition is becoming worst which has created high unemployment, the number of employees losing job-related health insurance protection is about to rise significantly. So it is crucial for every person to know about other options he can utilize for health cover after losing his job.