What’s so Special about Special Enrollment? by Laura Sedlacek

LENOIR, NC (January 22, 2018)…Did you miss the Affordable Care Act (ACA) Annual Enrollment Period (AEP) which recently ended on December 15th?  This was a shortened enrollment period when compared to the last couple of years of annual enrollments.

Even though the ACA has been in place for several years, many people aren’t aware of all the enrollment rules and/or changes to those rules.  There have always been certain time periods for enrollment since the portion of the ACA which involves individual health plans went into place.

If you didn’t enroll during the 2018 AEP (November 1st – December 15th), you may still be eligible for coverage.  Enrolling now outside of the AEP is called Special Enrollment (SE).  Under certain circumstances, you may qualify for a special enrollment and then you can apply for an ACA Individual Health plan.  Special Enrollment circumstances include moving, loss of Employer Group Health coverage, getting married or divorced, losing Medicaid, turning age 26 and going off of a parent’s plan, and having a baby.  Other special enrollment circumstances may also apply.

You would need to be able to prove your special enrollment circumstance and then you can also apply for a major medical ACA Individual Health plan.

If you don’t qualify for SE, there are some other options available to you.  Those options include Short-term Health, Hospital Indemnity, Cancer plans, Accident plans and Critical Illness.  Also, if you own a business you could possibly put in a group health plan for you and your employees.

The Group employee health coverage (which is Major Medical) will satisfy the mandate to have health insurance (the vote to remove it doesn’t apply until 2019) while the other plans (Hospital Indemnity, Short-term Health, Cancer, Accident, Critical Illness) do not count as satisfying the law.  However, they still provide some limited coverage.

The important thing to remember is that Special Enrollments are available to you all year until AEP opens up again.

Questions?  Think you may qualify for Special Enrollment?

Contact Laura at Bush and Associates today (828) 754-2601 or email quotes@bushandassociates.net to find out.

~Laura Sedlacek specializes in Individual Health insurance.  She is a member of the Healthcare.gov Circle of Champions for 2018 and was also a member of it in 2017.  An Agent with Bush and Associates in Lenoir, NC, she has been offering ACA individual health plans since they began in 2013.  Contact Laura at (828) 754-2601, quotes@bushandassociates.net, or by logging onto:  https://www.healthsherpa.com/?_agent_id=laura-bushsedlacek or http://www.mynchealthplan.com