HIPAA applies if you lose your job and you were covered by your employers health plan. You have to elect COBRA coverage and exhaust it, then you have to make timely application for the individual policy. It’s a little advertised secret. Most employers, insurance companies, and sales people won’t tell you about it. In the past, there’ve been reports of some insurance folks playing games with the requirements to finesse people out of using it.
COBRA is for employees of companies who have 20 or more employees for more than 50% of the working days in the year who have current group health plans.
By FEDERAL LAW all of those employers are REQUIRED to inform an ex-employee of their rights under COBRA. Failure to do so carries fines.
No agent or employer meeting those requirements “hides” these benefits from employees.
I’m a broker and get asked this question quite often by people. All employees who leave a job, unless fired for cause such as theft, have the right to continue coverage.
Most employees don’t do so as they find out that they must pay the full premium that the employer has been mostly paying for them.
There has been in the past additonal help from the Federal Gov in having the employer pay for the coverage for an addtional 9 months for which the employer is supposed to get a tax credit.
One of the most important questions that insurance agents are required to ask the client and is on ALL of the insurance applications is if the application is on COBRA or if they were eligible and turned it down or declined coverage.
So to say the employers or insurance agents “hide” this is incorrect.
Here’s the possible catch, do they have to accept your application at all after COBRA? You say you have heart problems in your application (lying is probably a felony) and as far as I know in many non ‘shall issue’ states they don’t have to take you as a client. No sane insurer would take a sick person if they don’t have to.