Compare Health Insurance Plans with Just One Click
By David Pastore, Managing Editor
Jayne P’s monthly insurance premium skyrocketed when she lost her job last month. Even though she received continued health coverage through COBRA, it was thousands of dollars more each year since her company’s contribution was no longer in effect.
COBRA – The Consolidated Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act – gives workers and their families who lose their health benefits the right to choose to continue group health benefits provided by their group health plan, for limited periods of time, under certain circumstances. The circumstances include voluntary or involuntary job loss, reduction in the hours worked and transition between jobs, to name a few. However, qualified individuals may be required to pay the entire premium for coverage up to 102 percent of the cost to the plan.
Once you are no longer employed at your company, your COBRA benefit may not be the most efficient health insurance plan available for you and/or your family. So, while money has suddenly become tighter, what can you do?
To determine if your COBRA plan is the best option, here are a few companies that can provide you with easy tools to compare online:
The sites will allow you to plug in some personalized info and get a list of companies that would offer coverage to you while showing you actual costs on a monthly basis. You can then compare the plans within that site to each other – and also compare those plans to your COBRA costs.
Maybe your COBRA plan is best; maybe not. It’s worth taking just a few minutes to look at what other health insurance companies can do for you. When your COBRA coverage could be costing $1,500 or more per month, it’s vitally important to find more affordable medical insurance, and the web makes it easy to find the plan that’s right for you.