Before you try a short-term plan, consider the pros and cons:
PROS
- You can buy them any time of year.
- Their premiums are generally lower than major medical insurance plans. The average premium for short-term plans sold by eHealth in California last year was $177 per month, Purpura says.
- They may have broader networks of doctors and hospitals than some plans available from exchanges.
CONS
- They won’t accept you if you have pre-existing conditions, or if they do, they won’t cover them.
- They may not cover benefits such as maternity care, preventive services or prescription drugs. Some may offer drug or dental discount plans, but those aren’t the same as insurance.
- They last less than a year and you have to reapply at the end of each term. There’s no guarantee you’ll be accepted again, especially if you got seriously ill while you had coverage.
Despite advice to shop around before selecting a plan, consumers may find that getting answers about drug coverage can be an exercise in frustration, despite a federal health law requirement that insurers provide lists of the prescription medications included in their plans.
That’s because many treatments — particularly intravenous treatments like those used in cancer, hemophilia or multiple sclerosis — are covered under a separate part of an insurance plan, not the pharmacy benefit.
Cigna CEO David Cordani says the individual market created by the 2010 health law would be better off if insurers were given more flexibility in designing coverage, as well as a more compressed, focused open enrollment period. Just days after UnitedHealth Group’s CEO said their move into the new marketplace was a mistake, Cordani reaffirmed that Cigna remains committed for 2016, although the firm is so far losing money on that business.
The penalty for failing to have health insurance is going up next year, perhaps even higher than expected. Among uninsured individuals who are not exempt from the ObamaCare penalty, the average household fine for not having insurance in 2015 will be $661, rising to $969 per household in 2016, according to a Kaiser Family Foundation analysis.
An increasing number of preferred provider plans (PPOs) offered under the health care law have no ceiling for out-of-network costs, leaving policyholders facing unlimited financial exposure. Forty-five percent of the silver level PPO plans coming to the market for the first time in 2016 provide no annual cap for policyholders’ out-of-network costs, an analysis by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation finds.