Health coverage between jobs, but my wife is pregnant?
Question:
Answer:
You should be eligible for COBRA, but keep this in mind...it can take awhile for the COBRA paperwork to catch up. This is would happen leading up to you electing COBRA:
1) Current employer sends notice to your current insurer notifying them to drop you from the coverage.
2) You get a COBRA notice from the COBRA administrator advising you of your rights to elect the coverage, and have to respond with your first month's payment in the appropriate time frame.
3) During the time that you're completing all the COBRA paperwork, it looks like you have no insurance. (Once all your COBRA paperwork is completed, they backdate the coverage so that you don't have an actual gap. However, until the paperwork is completed, you still look uninsured to the insurance company and any doctor/hospital who calls to verify your benefits.)
4) The COBRA administrator receives the paperwork from you and forwards notification to the insurance company that you're now on COBRA. The insurance company updates their records showing you with coverage. This process can take anywhere from 4-6 weeks...which leads me to the next point...
5) If your wife delivers the baby during the time all the COBRA paperwork is changing hands, it will LOOK like you're uninsured at the time of delivery. This means that you'll start getting a ton of bills from the doctor, hospital, anesthesiologist, and whatever other provider treats your wife in the hospital. Once your COBRA paperwork is finalized, you'll then have to contact all these providers to provide them with the correct insurance information, ask them to please bill your insurer, etc. Be prepared to still get bills in the mail in the meantime, b/c inevitably one of your doctors/hospital providers will probably get confused when trying to bill the insurer with the new information after the fact.
This will all be a HUGE, GIANT, PAIN IN THE BUTT for you. (I cannot stress that enough...I've had people go ballistic on me before saying "but I have COBRA." They don't understand that having all the COBRA paperwork pass from you to all the other parties who handle it can take several weeks to complete. Until you send the COBRA paperwork to the COBRA administrator and the COBRA administrator sends it to the insurer, as far as the insurance company is concerned you have no coverage.)
Unless you're prepared to deal with that mess OR you're certain that your wife won't deliver for several weeks after you leave your employer, I would highly recommend NOT leaving until after the birth of your child.
Cobra is ridiculously expensive. They have to offer COBRA no matter the circumstances of you leaving. Any chance you can stay, at least until the baby is born and make sure you know when your benfits start at the new job. If its 30-90 days, they you may have to do COBRA and if you go with that, then you can leave as planned.
I hope I understand what your trying to say here. Even if you go on COBRA your benefits will not change. It will continue as is. The only difference is you now pay for the premium in it's entirety. Upon your resignation go to human resources and advise them you wish to apply for COBRA. You will be given a couple of forms you need to sign. They in turn forward those forms to there broker of record who forwards the paperwork to your major medical provider. You will not lose your coverage or have any breaks in your coverage. Again, I do recommend the minute you submit your letter of resignation you go to HR to fill out these required forms. COBRA is available to all former employees even if they resign. When your insurance kicks in from your new place of employment you will not need to worry about any pre-existing condition clauses of no coverage. This only applies if the individual was not insured over the course of the last six months. Obviously this wouldn't apply to you.
I just went through this, and pregnancy is no longer considered a preexisting condition. Your new insurance will cover the pregnancy. I was surprised because 10 years ago with our first child that wasn't the case, but he is with a reputable nationwide company now, and the boss told us that we wouldn't have any problems and we didn't. The following site shows the law on this, pregnancy, newborns and adopted children cannot be excluded. Good luck.
You can go to the Department of Human Services and ask them for help if and you probably couldn't afford COBRA. They should get her set up with medical, dental and food stamps if you qualify. I would then try to get on WIC, they hook you up with formula, juices, cereal, it's a great thing if you can get in on it!
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