How to Get Health Insurance when the Exchanges are Closed (2024)

By David Carlson / Last updated: May 17, 2014 / Health Care

Hello everyone! This post will only be relevant to our American readers. If you live outside the United States, consider checking out a couple of our other posts: Ways to Eat Healthy on a Budget or How I Plan on Fast-Tracking Financial Independence.

As you are probably well aware, the health insurance exchanges (HIX) are no longer open for just anyone to enroll in health insurance for 2014.

The next time the exchanges will be completely open for anyone to enroll will be November 15th. This enrollment period will be for plans taking effect January 1st, 2015.

So what if you didn’t get around to signing up for health insurance before the open enrollment period ended? Or what if you lost your current insurance and are no longer covered?

Whatever the reason that you don’t have health insurance coverage, there are still some options available to you. It’s not nearly as easy as it was during open enrollment, but it’s worth checking out if you missed out.

Qualifying Life Event

The first thing to wrap your head around is that even though open enrollment has ended the Health Insurance Exchanges are technically still open. You can log in and view plans, but can only sign up if you have a “qualified life event.”

If you get married you can usually join your spouse’s employer health insurance coverage. In the same way, a “qualified life event” will allow you to enroll in health insurance via the exchange. According to HHS, qualifying life events include:

• Marriage, having a baby, adopting a child or placing a child for adoption or foster care, moving your residence, gaining citizenship, leaving incarceration

• Losing other health coverage—due to losing job-based coverage, divorce, the end of an individual policy plan year in 2014, COBRA expiration, aging off a parent’s plan, losing eligibility for Medicaid or CHIP, and similar circ*mstances. Important: Voluntarily ending coverage doesn’t qualify you for a special enrollment period. Neither does losing coverage that doesn’t qualify as minimum essential coverage.

• For people already enrolled in Marketplace coverage: Having a change in income or household status that affects eligibility for premium tax credits or cost-sharing reductions

• Gaining status as member of an Indian tribe. Members of federally recognized Indian tribes can sign up for or change plans once per month throughout the year.

If you experience a qualifying life event you can sign up for coverage through your State or Federal health insurance exchange.

Some additional options

If you didn’t have a qualifying life event happen to you and you don’t fall under the group that had issues during the enrollment process during open enrollment, there are additional options available to you.

First, see if you can get coverage through Medicaid or CHIP.

Medicaid

Medicaid is a government program in the United States that provides insurance for low-income individuals and families. Medicaid became a bit trickier recently as some States expanded Medicaid coverage while others opted to not expand coverage. There is a good chart here showing the income limits for Medicaid based on family size.

To see if you qualify for Medicaid go to the bottom of this page and select your State. This should bring you to your State’s Medicaid page, where there (should) be instructions for determining if you qualify. If you qualify for Medicaid you can sign up at any time for health insurance coverage.

CHIP

CHIP is the Children’s Health Insurance Program which provides health insurance coverage to children who do not have health insurance but whose family makes too high of an income to qualify for Medicaid.

To see if your children qualify for CHIP go through the same steps as you would to see if you qualify for Medicaid.

If you or your family does not qualify for Medicaid or CHIP family, consider these last two options:

Get a job that offers health insurance

Getting a job with benefits that include health insurance may be easier said than done, or even unrealistic for some people. If you can, though, this would be an ideal way to get health insurance.

Even if you could get a plan through the Exchange, they are typically more expensive than employer plans because the employer usually will chip in and cover part of the costs of the plan.

Get a short-term plan for the rest of the year

If all else fails you should still be able to get coverage through a short-term health insurance plan. They are available on e-Health Insurance and should get you coverage until you can sign up for a plan through the exchange.

Next time open enrollment comes around make sure you sign up for health insurance before the open enrollment period expires. It’s much easier to sign up during open enrollment versus figuring out how you can get coverage after-the-fact.
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Photo by Keirsten Marie