In my continued journey to obtain the private health insurance now available due to The Affordable Care Act/Obamacare, I've been checking the status of my application at https://www.healthcare.gov/. After two weeks, it's still "in progress." I called and easily reached a real person at 1-800-318-2596. Unfortunately, he said there was no way to provide potential plan information until the application finished processing. At the very least, I'd hoped for an overview of the differences between...
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self-employed
In Which I Probably Applied For Health Insurance (Post No. 5 of Adventures in Health Insurance)
Since my first attempt, I've been periodically checking the Illinois insurance exchange to apply for health insurance coverage under Obamacare (The Affordable Care Act). I'm self-employed and have coverage now through an Illinois program that allowed me to purchase what is basically an extension of COBRA coverage. COBRA, for those not familiar with it, is a law allowing someone covered under a group employer health plan to extend that coverage for 18 months after leaving employmen...
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First Day Trying To Get On The Health Insurance Exchange (Post No. 4 of Adventures in Health Insurance)
This morning I tried to get on the Illinois Health Insurance Exchange. As I talked about in previous posts, I am self-employed as an author and attorney. I bought health insurance through an Illinois program that allows people to continue their COBRA coverage. I was turned down for individual health insurance, so I'm hoping that through the Exchange I'll have some more options for coverage.First, I needed to find the exchange. I googled "Illinois Get Covered" because I'd heard on the ...
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Virtual Camping Out in Line for the Health Insurance Exchange (Post No. 3 of Adventures in Health Insurance)
Being both a writer and a lawyer, I have hard time turning off my brain (or maybe that's why I became a writer and a lawyer). As I wrote in my two previous posts, I'm self-employed, so I have no group insurance option, and I was turned down for individual health insurance. So I did some preliminary research on the exchanges. Below is what I learned.Differences in types of plans: The main difference I found between the Bronze, Silver, Gold, and Platinum plans that will be offered is the est...
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Once I Became Self-Employed (Post 2 of Adventures in Health Insurance)
On a sunny day about about a month and a half before I planned to leave the large law firm where I worked, I played tennis for the first time in years. I felt great. I'd arranged for office space for my own practice, FindLaw had finished my firm website, and I'd set up my landline and bought a Blackberry. As noted in the last post, I'd been very healthy, didn't smoke, and was the appropriate height and weight (see photo -- that's me). But I'd had an exclusion a decad...
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