Weird health insurance COBRA (continuation)

[J-rap]

Our daughter turns 26 this month and will be officially off of our health insurance.  She just graduated from college and will be job-hunting, so will hopefully get health insurance with benefits in the next few months.  

 

In the meantime, she has been told that as of 1/1/16 she has 60 days to decide if she wants to remain on our plan through COBRA, and that it will then be retroactive to 1/1/16.  That means that we don't need to decide til March 1.  So if her appendix ruptures on February 1, we can still decide right then and there to keep her on our plan and she will be covered. 

 

This seems so strange to me.

[zoobie]

That's how it worked for us long ago (2004 I think?).

[Joules]

That's what we've always been told.

 

Though keep in mind if she doesn't have continuous coverage, she may have to pay that penalty come tax time.

[umsami]

That's how it has worked for me with COBRA each time, too.  

 

I would check your local state exchange to get an idea of rates, as well.   COBRA may offer much better plans for the time being.

[cjzimmer1]

Yep, if DH and I make it through the rest of today with injury or sickness requiring a doctor visit, then we have successful saved ourselves about $500 in medical premiums.  DH left his old job in mid November but isn't eligible for insurance at new job until March.  So we had to sign up for some insurance through the marketplace but we had about 70 days before we had to decide on Cobra so we decided to try to ride out 2015 without insurance and save the money knowing that we could activate Cobra (at a higher cost than a plan through the marketplace), if we ended up needing serious medical care. We will have a marketplace plan for the first 2 months of 2016.  I would have like to skip January as well but we the timing of sign-ups didn't work for us so we had to take the marketplace for January too.

 

But be aware, if she doesn't find a job that starts with insurance immediately in those 60 days and you activate Cobra, then she won't be eligible for marketplace insurance until 2017 signups begin.  Most likely it will be cheaper to sign her up for a market place policy than Cobra.

Edited December 31, 2015 by cjzimmer1

[Carol in Cal.]

COBRA is often better coverage, though.

[cjzimmer1]

COBRA is often better coverage, though.

 

Probably depends on what you got.  Our market place policy is about $400 dollar a month cheaper (before the subsidy even cheaper after that) and the deductible is about 1/3 of our Cobra policy (although I do know there is some cost sharing benefit there.  Even without the cost sharing the marketplace deductible was about $1000 less per year than our Cobra policy).  But yes DH's old work had really, really crappy insurance, if you have a somewhat decent policy Cobra might be better.  Just one of those you have to go over everything with a find toothed comb and make sure you are comparing apples to apples.

 

[ktgrok]

Our daughter turns 26 this month and will be officially off of our health insurance.  She just graduated from college and will be job-hunting, so will hopefully get health insurance with benefits in the next few months.  

 

In the meantime, she has been told that as of 1/1/16 she has 60 days to decide if she wants to remain on our plan through COBRA, and that it will then be retroactive to 1/1/16.  That means that we don't need to decide til March 1.  So if her appendix ruptures on February 1, we can still decide right then and there to keep her on our plan and she will be covered. 

 

This seems so strange to me.

 

Yup. And when we had it, after you sent in the paper work at that 60 day mark you had another 30 days to pay. So we waited the 60 days, faxed the paperwork, then had new insurance before that 30 day grace period for payement was over. So we just didn't pay and canceled it. It was great, because if we had gotten injured we could have paid, and it would be retroactive, but as we didn't need it we didn't have to pay. Given how expensive it can be, that was a good thing. 

[Tess in the Burbs]

Yep. You have 60 days to decide. Another 30 to pay. You could say yes on Feb 28th but pay Mar 27th for Dr visit back on Jan 2.

 

We just wrapped up 60 days with only 3 visits and we decided to eat that cost instead of filing Cobra and deal with the paperwork and time to get paid back. We had a # in mind as our line in the sand.

[Serenade]

Yep, if DH and I make it through the rest of today with injury or sickness requiring a doctor visit, then we have successful saved ourselves about $500 in medical premiums.  DH left his old job in mid November but isn't eligible for insurance at new job until March.  

 

 

This is sort of what happened to us, too, although we ended up saving $2800.  My husband left his job at the end of October, and his company so delayed on getting the Cobra information to us (it was the end of November), that it seemed like a bad decision to pay $1400 for health insurance we didn't use at all that month, and that we had actively avoided using due to the lack of information about the Cobra plan.  We did learn that there was a two month grace period to avoid the Obamacare fine, and since we, too, could access Cobra retroactively into mid-January, we decided to take our chances and see if we could remain healthy for the remainder of 2015.  We did, and that is the first thing DH and I toasted at midnight.  Our purchased Obamacare starts today.

Edited January 1, 2016 by Serenade

[Ellesmere]

Yes, awhile ago (don't remember which year) we were able to delay until the last moment. I remember thinking it was too good to be true.
If there is a concern about not taking it because it wasn't needed and the penalty for a gap in coverage, I would read everything very carefully, but the FAQs here might help. The link should go to one particular question about gaps but there are a bunch of other scenarios posted.
http://kff.org/health-reform/faq/health-reform-frequently-asked-questions/#question-i-had-several-short-coverage-gaps-in-a-year-i-was-uninsured-in-march-then-again-in-august-since-the-total-gap-was-less-than-3-months-am-i-exempt-from-the-penalty

[cjzimmer1]

This is sort of what happened to us, too, although we ended up saving $2800.  My husband left his job at the end of October, and his company so delayed on getting the Cobra information to us (it was the end of November), that it seemed like a bad decision to pay $1400 for health insurance we didn't use at all that month, and that we had actively avoided using due to the lack of information about the Cobra plan.  We did learn that there was a two month grace period to avoid the Obamacare fine, and since we, too, could access Cobra retroactively into mid-January, we decided to take our chances and see if we could remain healthy for the remainder of 2015.  We did, and that is the first thing DH and I toasted at midnight.  Our purchased Obamacare starts today.

 

Our Cobra policy was about $1200 but we could have got insurance for 2015 through the market place and those policies were only $500, so I only counted that as our "savings" amount even though with that we couldn't retroactivate it.  We'll only be on our marketplace policy for 2 months and then we switch to his employer's insurance so even though we are paying for insurance we are trying to go another 2 months without going to the doctor since we'd end up paying for everything out of pocket towards the deductible and our deductible will reset again when we switch insurances March 1.  But I'm still happy we made it through the end of 2015 without having to pay those premiums.

[Scarlett]

If she has no job she can probably get insurance for very cheap through the marketplace. My niece is 27 and is in nursing school.....her premium is zero and deductible is zero.