Health Insurance Articles
Finding Health Care Coverage For Those Who Have Been Downsized
2010-11-16
As economic hard times continue and round after round of layoffs are announced, families often panic when one or both parties who are responsible for the family's financial wellbeing are downsized. Finding coverage for individuals who have been downsized is not as impossible or unfeasible as it may seem, however. With the new economic stimulus package, individuals who have been downsized between a certain time period are eligible for almost a three quarter subsidy of costs to maintain Cobra health care coverage for themselves and their families. Other avenues may include investigating whether a spouse who is still employed can provide the family with full coverage under that person's employer sponsored health care package. Still another avenue if neither of those options is workable is to investigate finding coverage through gathering health insurance coverage quotes and selecting an individual health care plan from amongst those quotes.
Finding coverage through gathering health insurance coverage quotes most often begins with a simple internet search for available health care policies that will meet the individual's or the family's needs. With the wealth of information so freely available over the internet, an online search is likely the ideal place to begin a search for health care coverage after being downsized. Downsized employees can quickly access most major health insurance carriers on the internet, filling in a simple online form with some preliminary data including name, gender, age, state of residence, number of dependents, marital status, and possibly some basic health history, and can receive ballpark quotes for what an individual or family health care policy can cost. Often, these types of individual policies are vastly cheaper than Cobra premiums, especially when factoring in the extra administration fee that the downsizing company assesses to provide Cobra to employees who have been downsized.
Once several likely health care coverage carriers have been identified via an internet search, it is now time to compare each plan against the others and select the one that will best serve the downsized individual's health care coverage needs. A phone call to each of the chosen health care coverage carriers will provide more specific information about what each policy covers, how the carrier handles claims processing and reimbursement for medical expenses, questions about coverage for a spouse or dependants, any limitations, restrictions, or waiting periods, and other questions that must be addressed before a plan is selected.
Finding health care coverage for those who have been downsized is certainly possible, and is a manageable task with access to the internet. Downsized employees should not despair finding health care coverage - affordable coverage is often close at hand with just the click of a mouse button.
