health

With Open Enrollment coming up, it is important to look at your personal situation and think about if there is anything that you would like to change with your health insurance. Things that you should take into consideration would be if you like your current provider, if you want to change the type of plan you have due to cost, or if you don’t have health insurance at all and need to get it!

Just like in past years, if you don’t have employer provided health insurance and you are over the age of 26, you cannot be on your parent’s plan anymore. But unlike in 2018, going forward from 2019 and onward, there will no longer be a penalty unless the state you reside in mandates a penalty for not having health insurance.

If you are not happy with your provider you can shop around for another during this Open Enrollment period, and if you want to change the type of plan you have you can do so during this time as well! If you have a specific doctor that you want to go to, but is not within your network, you can find which provider has them in-network and sign-up with them. Or if you just want to switch to try something else out you can as well, no problem!

There are exceptions to this Open Enrollment period, with life changing events you can change your plan to better suit you. If you have a child, get married, or lose your coverage you can change or enroll in a different plan for 60 days following the event. But otherwise you will have from November 1st to December 15th, 2018 to make any changes—and remember any changes made during Open Enrollment start on January 1st, 2019, so get ready and plan accordingly!

Health insurance is a very important component of any person’s safety net. Without sufficient health insurance, you can find yourself in a rough situation medically, made worse by a giant medical bill out of left-field! And if you have children this becomes especially important since their health is of the upmost importance.

When I was a kid in kindergarten, I remember my whole class went to the nurse and we did a little check-up to make sure we were in good health. When I was doing the eye test, my school nurse found out I could not see out of my right eye, which was effectively blind (I remember thought I had X-Ray vision in my right eye since everything was blurry out of that eye when I was a kid!) and losing vision in my left.

When my mom got the call from the nurse to tell her I was going blind she was getting her PhD— and had absolutely no insurance. So, she dropped out of her PhD program and found a job that had a good health insurance plan so she could take me to a specialist, which she did and the specialist ended up saving my vision. Another kicker to this is we also found out my little brother had the same issues during my check-ups and ended up saving his vision as well!

With this memory of mine, I cannot stress how much it helped me at a very young age, and I am thankful that something like this exists— otherwise I might not be here typing this today. Do not let yourself go without or have insufficient coverage, because you will never regret having it when you truly need it.