One year into the Affordable Care Act we ALL face the open enrollment period for 2015. The time during which changes can be made with a January 1 effective date is 11/15/2014 – 12/15/2014. This is important since MANY plans will automatically terminate on December 31 of this year. Changes in plan design after December 15 will be effective February 1 at the earliest. Beware that you are not concentrating on the wrong dates or aspects of your optional plans. We urge you to call us regarding your plan.
As each policyholder has different needs, we at CDA Inc. are offering our clients the opportunity to shop alternate options and consult on an individual basis.
•If you are on a grandfathered plan (effective before 3/23/2010 with no changes since) that is allowing you to keep your current policy, nothing further may need to be done at this time. Some grandfathered plans are being offered an option with Affordable Care Act modifications at a significantly higher rate. In either case, it will be in your best interest to see what else is available.
•If you have already enrolled in an Affordable Care Act compliant plan either ON or OFF-Exchange (1/1/2014-current), you should be able to keep your current policy with an increased premium effective 1/1/2015, but feel free to utilize our agency to see if there are any better options for the 2015 plan year. Also, please call us so that we can review your subsidy eligibility and what level of subsidy you might fall into.
•If you fall between the two prior plan types, you likely signed an early renewal or NPO (New Policy Offer) from your insurance carrier at the end of 2013. This option MAY NOT be available for 2015, so it is critical that you contact our office to review your options now. We are beginning to receive calls from a number of our clients regarding mailings which state that policies will be terminated at the end of the year, but that there are alternate plan options being offered. If you receive a notice of this nature, please have it handy when you contact our office to discuss other options. If you choose to call directly to the insurance carrier to make changes, beware that the telemarketers are trained to discuss only their plan designs and that you will have to deal directly with the 1-800 number for the 2015 calendar year and not have access to our agency services.
Although 2015 plan designs and rates still have not been released, we have been told that this information will be made public on 11/15/2014. We would encourage you to contact our agency now to begin discussing options. Also, if you know of anyone who might need a helping hand to figure out their healthcare options, please feel free to give them our information as this can be a difficult project for anyone to undertake alone. Thank you very much for your continued confidence in our agency and please know that we greatly appreciate all of your business. We look forward to speaking with you in the next few weeks.