Individual Medical Insurance Offers COBRA Alternative

As the job market declines, the population of uninsured Americans swells. And paying for health insurance, along with everything else, weighs heavily on a multitude of minds these days. When it comes to options, COBRA may be the buzzword, but an alternative called individual medical insurance may offer a more palatable solution.   Unemployment rose from 7.5 to 8.1 percent in February 2009-its highest rate in more than 25 years according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. A study by the Kaiser Commission on Medicaid and the Uninsured, April 2008, indicates that each one percent increase in the national unemployment rate leads to more than 1 million additional people losing their medical insurance. Through COBRA, employees who lose their jobs are able to continue employer-sponsored medical insurance coverage for up to 18 months. However, they may pay 110 percent of the cost of the traditional insurance premium for COBRA continuation coverage. Relief seemed to appear in February 2009 when President Obama signed the $787 billion economic stimulus package, which included a subsidy covering 65 percent of COBRA premiums for the first nine months of unemployment. This assistance is available to eligible workers who have lost or will lose their jobs as a result of the current economic recession between September 1, 2008 and December 31, 2009. Still, COBRA remains out of reach for many collecting unemployment checks and struggling to pay for bare necessities. Pre-subsidy annual COBRA premiums average $4,400 for individuals and $11,000 for families, according to Kaiser Family Foundation statistics. "As Anthem Blue Cross representatives , we understand that these are tough economic times. We understand that people are worried about keeping their job, and if they should lose their job, the struggle to make ends meet with COBRA premiums seems overwhelming," ...

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Tags: Medical Insurance News

This entry was posted on Sunday, May 24th, 2009 at 2:17 am and is filed under News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.