Confused as to whether or not your current Health plan will be cancelled or not ?
The pendulum has swung back and forth so much over the last two weeks that most of us have been left with whiplash!
Here’s the short version – California is not adhering to the Presidents request. However you will have until December 23rd to sign up for a January 1st effective date, and until March 1st to get coverage with guaranteed issue.
We are licensed and certified for plans both in the exchange (Covered California) as well as additional carriers and plans outside the exchange. ALL Carriers & ALL Plans are available to you NOW from us with full GUARANTEED ISSUE.
Call us and we can help you through the maze…
For those that want the full story, read on…
Some of the plans carriers had did not comply with the new Affordable Care Act (ACA) standards (free checkups, etc). So most carriers offered new plans and mapped current insured to a new plan.
Most insureds are confused on the mappings – and not all made sense!
Call us if you would like us to review, as you can go to ANY plan, with ANY carrier – again – ALL GUARANTEED issue.
That said.. On November 14th President Obama announced a “fix” to the Affordable Care Act (ACA) that would allow individual policy-holders to retain their current health care plan coverage. As you are aware, a number of current products are already considered “grandfathered” (written or re-written after March 15th, 2010) by the ACA, today’s announcement would permit even those individual products that do not meet the requirements of the ACA to be extended at least into 2014.
So a bunch of back and forth all week and yesterday California’s Insurance Commissioner David Jones finally responded Thursday. "The President's action today makes it crystal clear that health insurers and HMOs are not required by federal law to cancel existing policies," said Jones. "California has more than 1 million people with non-grandfathered policies facing cancellation; they should be given the opportunity to keep their existing coverage next year. I am calling on all health insurers in California to let their policyholders keep their existing coverage for an additional year if they want it."
But today’s announcement (Friday Nov 22, 2013) from the California Health Insurance Exchange Board put all that aside:
SACRAMENTO --The board of the state's new health insurance exchange Thursday may have infuriated hundreds of thousands of Californians with its decision not to go along with President Barack Obama's directive to extend their individual health insurance policies for another year.
But the exchange, called Covered California, did offer a few conciliatory gestures. Among them are an extension of a Dec. 15 application deadline to enroll in a health insurance plan to Dec. 23. That might ruin the Christmas season for those who work for insurance companies, but it will give the Californians with canceled health plans more time to shop for new ones.
Most of the individual plans are being canceled because they don't comply with the new federal health care law.
SO back to square one. All of our clients need to get insurance if not covered - and YOU are in the drivers seat with every plan and carrier open to you. Contact us and we'll set you up - no fees, no extra cost, but you'll have an agent on your side to help you later with problems!