If you were automatically reenrolled into a 2018 Marketplace health insurance plan, you have another 60 days to go to Healthcare.gov to make changes to auto selections.
“If they have not gone and actively chosen a plan, they do get that 60-day window starting January 1 if they do want to go back to the Marketplace and actively choose a plan,” said Nancy Kelley, director of Expanding Coverage initiative for Cover Missouri.
“It’s just for people who had a Marketplace plan, which they were notified it was going to be ending December 31 (discontinued) and they were auto re-enrolled into whatever the Marketplace picked for them.”
Despite an Open Enrollment period that lasted only 45 days, very little federal advertising and scheduled maintenance shutdowns at healthcare.gov during usual peak enrollment times, a record 8.8 million people enrolled for health insurance during that condensed window.
Ironically, the special enrollment period is longer than was open enrollment. States operating their own marketplaces have longer enrollment periods, some until the end of January.
As Republican congressional leadership celebrate their new tax plan which removes the penalty for not having insurance under the Affordable Care Act, that action that could make it more expensive for those who are insured – while chipping away a major building block of Obamacare.
“Our larger concern is stability of the market, and the experts are telling us that this will probably make it destabilize a little bit more,” Kelley said.
“Some people will choose not to purchase insurance, and some of those folks will be the healthy younger ones who essentially less expensive to insure. And so that leaves a more expensive risk pool so the insurers then will raise their premiums to offset that expected higher cost.”
Tax filers who have to pay the penalty for this year should not celebrate yet. Kelley said the penalty doesn’t go away until 2019.
“People will still need coverage in 2018. We don’t want people to get confused and not get coverage if they can,” she said. “Some people will qualify for that Open Enrollment period depending on their circumstances.”
If in the last 60 days, you have experienced a major life change – lost a job, got divorced, legally separated or married, birthed or adopted a baby, placed a child in foster care, or experienced a death in the family that makes you no longer eligible for your current insurance coverage – then you qualify for the Special Enrollment period.
Additionally, the millions of persons who are disabled or with live with limited incomes who qualify for Medicaid or for state-run Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) can enroll immediately.
