Guaranteed Issue Plans — Guaranteed Issue Plans, Coverage & Quotes
If you or any member of your family has a pre-existing condition, buying a health insurance plan can be a struggle. Many common conditions, including diabetes, high blood pressure, and pregnancy can prevent you from buying family health insurance. However, it doesn’t have to be this way. Unfortunately, most health insurance plans will not cover a cancer, heart attack, or stroke survivor either. This places your family in a vicious cycle: when one of the health insurance companies rejects you, it leaves a black mark on your record. As a result, other non-guaranteed issue plans will look at you or your family members as undesirable patients and therefore are more likely to automatically deny health coverage.
Many insurance companies will refuse to sell family health insurance plans to those they consider as high-risk. As for-profit companies, they earn money by enrolling millions of healthy families while minimizing the number of medical claims they pay out. Understandably, health insurers do not want to take on someone that already has a known health problem. If the average health insurance plan agrees to cover your family, that family health insurance coverage may exclude any treatment involving any pre-existing conditions! Obviously, health insurance that doesn’t cover the health care you need is very inconvenient. Guaranteed issue health insurance may be the solution for families who are in the greatest need of health insurance.
A guaranteed issue plan is required to provide coverage for all applicants, regardless of health status or risk. When buying health insurance for your family, health insurance companies have to be certain that they can still turn a profit based on your policy alone. Therefore, you are less likely to be approved by their underwriters. You can turn to a guaranteed issue health insurance plan if you are unable to find other affordable family health insurance.
All of the family health insurance plans sold in some states are guaranteed-issue, but such plans are available nationwide. In most cases, guaranteed issue plans provide comprehensive major medical coverage: they cover doctor and hospital visits, and both inpatient and outpatient health care. Many also cover prescription medications. Such comprehensive plans are ideal for many families. The trade-off is that guaranteed issue health insurance is normally less affordable family health insurance than standard managed care plans. Family health insurance premiums are higher for those health insurers consider likely to file a greater number of expensive claims.
Also remember that many guaranteed issue health insurance policies force your family to wait up to a year before any pre-existing conditions are covered. While this is preferable to insurers refusing to cover them altogether, this can result in financial and medical hardship for your family in the meantime.
Ideally, you should buy family health insurance while you are still healthy to ensure coverage in case you fall ill. Instead of waiting for guaranteed issue health insurance, you can get insured at a lower rate. Still, bad things happen, and someone in your family can be diagnosed with a condition while they are uninsured. Although guaranteed issue health plans should be considered a last resort, they can be very helpful to your family in certain circumstances. For example, if the family’s breadwinner(s) become unemployed and and have had their COBRA benefits expire or cannot afford to continue their group coverage through COBRA, a guaranteed issue plan may be the right choice for them.
Ask VitalOne about your guaranteed issue family health insurance options. Our guaranteed issue family health insurance plans use Multiplan–the nation’s largest PPO network–resulting in greater savings and more convenience for your family. We have licensed insurance agents available to answer your questions and help you choose the plan that best fits your family’s needs.
