Do you have an individual health insurance policy?

Are you receiving a subsidy for your health insurance benefits from Covered California?

If your answer to either of those questions is YES
(or even “I think so”), then you’ll want to either
watch the video below or read the transcript below
the video.

“Hello, this is George Geldin of Geldin Insurance Services
with a message regarding individual health insurance.

It’s an Individual Insurance update for April 2015.

By the way, this message is for people who are on individual
insurance, not people who are on Nedicare.

We are, presently, at the very end of the Extended Special Enrollment
for people who have no health insurance.

And that is going to end on April 30th.

Once that’s over, in order to apply for individual insurance,
the applicant would need to have a special qualifying life event
to apply for individual health insurance.

Some of those qualifying life events would be:

• getting married
• having a baby
• coming off group health insurance involuntarily
• exhausting COBRA coverage…

Those are ways in which an applicant would
have the ability to enroll in health insurance,
individual health insurance, during the the rest of this calendar year.

Other than that, you have to wait until the next open enrollment
which is at the end of this year, to be effective January 1st of 2016,
in order to enroll for health insurance or to switch plans.

We anticipate a lot of changes coming down the pipe at the end
of this year for 2016, so keep your eye on that.

But the main main purpose, I think, of this message is for people
who have individual insurance right now…is my stern…I don’t know
how stern I can make a warning…please, please pay your insurance on time.

As you may or may not know, there’s a thirty day grace period
on your insurance premiums, due usually the first of the month,
then you have 30 days to pay it.

That’s the grace period.

In the past, people have been able to extend that and
insurance carriers have accepted payments well beyond that.
They would reinstate policies.

Insurance carriers are not doing that anymore, so if you’re late,
if you go beyond the 30 days, they will cancel that person and
they are not allowing for any kind of reinstatement.

We’ve already run into a lot of that, so please, please pay your
premiums on time because we won’t be able to get you new coverage
until the beginning of January next year if your individual policy
gets cancelled.

Also, for those people who were on Covered California and
were getting a subsidy, your subsidy is based on your income,
your reported income to Covered California. And, as you probably know,
the more you make, the less subsidy they give you.
And vice versa.

Well, if your income changes during the year, it is very important
that you notify Covered California within 30 days of,
what they call, a Substantial Income Change, so they can adjust your subsidy.

If you do not do that and your income is different,
especially vastly different, than what you anticipated it was going to be
this year, you may have to pay back part or all of the subsidy
when you do your taxes next year for 2015.

So stay on top of that. If you’re getting a subsidy from Covered California,
please keep in touch with them as to reporting any income changes.

That’s it for now.

Have a wonderful rest of spring and summer ahead, and be well and happy.

Take care!”