There are four main ways that you can get Kentucky Health Insurance that is right for you, and to a large extent which of them is going to work best will depend on your particular circumstances.
1/ Kentucky Health Insurance for Adults Under 26
It used to be the case that once you hit the age of 19 that you had to sort out your own health insurance policy. But with the advent of the Affordable Care Act you now have the option to stay insured on your parents policy up to the age of 26, even if you no longer live with your parents or are married.
This clearly can make a massive difference to large numbers of students who previously would have had to buy Student Health Insurance, which may well have cost more and covered them for less.
2/ Kentucky Health Insurance through work
This is the way that the majority of people in Kentucky get covered for health insurance.
In reality there are often a number of advantages of getting covered through your employers Group Kentucky Health Insurance Plan, rather than seeking out an individual policy.
The biggest advantage is that when you get covered through an employer who offers a policy they are usually prohibited from turning you away because of a pre-existing health condition. This is known as “non-discrimination”, and is important especially if you are older or have already been turned down for insurance because of a medical condition, or a family history of some particular medical problem.
Additionally, employer group policies tend to pay large percentages of the cost of the premiums as a perk to encourage people to work there. And so often you will find that they are the cheapest option, as well as being the one that is often the easiest to arrange.
It is therefore no surprise that 48% of all the health insurance in Kentucky is employer based programs.
3/ Individual Kentucky Health Insurance Plans
In Kentucky a surprisingly small percentage of people, just 3%, have Individual Kentucky Health Insurance Plans.
The reasons perhaps are that there are more hoops that you will have to jump through including medicals, and often you will have to pay more money for the basic levels of cover then you would under a group policy.
On the positive side however getting an individual policy does give you far more freedom to choose a plan that exactly fits your needs, and if you can afford it, then you can often buy much greater levels of protection for your family then would otherwise be available.
Additionally, whilst for many people Group policies are the path of least resistance; with a little more effort it is possible to get some great deals on individual insurance, so price should not necessarily be an obstacle to getting a policy.
It is always worth getting a few Individual Kentucky Health Insurance Quotes even if you have a group policy, because then you can not only see what cover is available, but also how much it might cost you if you ever lost your job or wanted to change plans for a more flexible alternative.
4/ Pre-Existing Condition Insurance Plan (PCIP) / High Risk Pool
With the advent of the Affordable Care Act there has now become a lot more focus on the individuals who have previously been locked out of the health insurance market.
Often this is because they have been rejected for cover by the health insurance companies because of pre-existing health conditions that they may have. This also tends to get worse as people get older, and so you end up with a situation that as people age an ever increasing number of them are not able to get covered.
The PCIP addresses this by setting down that if you have not had any health insurance for more than six months (and remember that 15% of the population of Kentucky are uninsured so this is a lot of people), have a pre-existing medical condition, and have been denied coverage by an insurance company then you may be able to get the PCIP Plan, which does not discriminate on the basis of previous medical issues.
The High Risk Pool in Kentucky is a separate program for residents of Kentucky which is designed to address the same issue, where there is a pool of money set aside for those who suffer from one of the high-risk conditions that have been specified by the Kentucky Government.
There is a long list of these on their website, and they include such conditions as Leukemia, Multiple Sclerosis, Strokes and Parkinson’s disease.
It is a good idea to take some time to review your various options and then pursue them with more research, getting a selection of Kentucky Health Insurance Quotes and comparing what is available to you.
