Workers laid off at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic are roughly halfway through a special 60-day grace period that allows them to sign up for Obamacare or employer-provided health care benefits, advocacy organizations said Thursday.
If they do not sign up for Affordable Care Act or COBRA benefits during that period, they will be uninsured and have to wait for the open-enrollment period in the fall to sign up for Obamacare, they cautioned.
“For some people, they’re already 30 days into a layoff, so the clock is ticking,” said Jeremy Smith, the program director at New Hampshire Navigates, which helps people enroll in the ACA Marketplace.
Despite layoffs that exceed 100,000, his organization has not seen a jump in requests for help to navigate the insurance marketplace.
President Donald Trump has rejected Gov. Chris Sununu’s request to institute an open enrollment period that would allow anyone to access coverage in New Hampshire’s federally facilitated ACA marketplace.
But people featuring a qualifying life event such as a layoff, loss of health insurance, marriage or birth of a child have 60 days to sign up for Obamacare.
There is no such time restriction to apply for coverage under expanded Medicaid, traditional Medicaid or Medicare, according to Smith. He said residents should especially consider expanded Medicaid. Income qualification levels are high — $2,498 a month for a family of three. Assets are not taken into account. And the $600 weekly pandemic-related federal unemployment check is not considered as income.
Obamacare, however, does include income from unemployment compensation, something his organization is asking Congress to change.
Eireann Sibley, a spokesman for the state Insurance Department, stressed that people with insurance do not face co-payments or deductible payments for coronavirus testing under a recent order issued by the Insurance Department.
Many insurance companies have waived cost sharing for COVID-19 treatment too, she said.
Anyone without insurance can obtain treatment at a federally qualified health center, she said.