Open enrollment is coming around! Lets talk about OE and COBRA cover.
If you’re currently on COBRA, during open enrollment, it is a really good idea to review the plans that are available on the Marketplace.
What a lot of people do not realize is that you might be eligible for premium health, and you’re paying a whole lot of money for your current cover.
Maybe you’re not even using those benefits you’re paying for.
TOP TIP:
You need to evaluate how you use your insurance this year.
- If you’ve not used it at all, let’s take a look at Marketplace and see what’s available to you.
- Remember: if you have COBRA cover now, you don’t have to keep it for the whole 18 months, you can certainly switch. But, once you let go of it, you can’t get it back.
- Let’s say you have dental and vision with COBRA:
- In most cases, you can separate out the medical and the dental & vision.
- Why is that important? Because dental vision on COBRA that was through an employer is generally cheaper and better than anything you can get on the open market. Let’s ride that out as long as we can. And then in 18 months when that’s running out, you know, contact me and we’ll get you on a different dental vision.
- It is the medical part that we need to evaluate. Again, if you’re currently on COBRA, during open enrollment, which is just about here, we need to look at plans and see what’s available to you versus what you have for COBRA. The biggest complaint I get with people on COBRA is the cost. I had a family last week that was paying $2,200 for COBRA, and they weren’t using their insurance. I was able to find them a plan that their doctors were in-network on, and they actually qualified for a subsidy but no one thought to look at all of that. They would only pay about $600 a month instead of $2,200 a month. It is going to save them a ton of money and they’re going to keep their dental vision coverage on COBRA.
TOP TIP:
Evaluate and look at your plans carefully.
Once you cancel Marketplace, you can’t get back on it until it’s open enrollment.
If you cancel COBRA for example, and you opt to do a limited benefit plan and then decide you want major medical, you won’t be able to do that to open enrollment.
As always, if you have any questions or need assistance understanding health insurance, please feel free to reach out to me.
