Coping Without Health Insurance While Unemployed
“It was the best of times; it was the worst of times.” This is the opening line to the famous novel “A Tale of Two Cities” by Charles Dickens, but to many Americans bidding adieu to 2008, it really just feels like the worst of times with no sunshine in sight.
About 1 million people lost their jobs in 2008, which means that over the course of a mere twelve months, 33% of the entire nation’s population found themselves jobless. That is pretty darn terrifying itself, not to mention the plethora of problems that come along with having no job. Not the least of these problems is losing your health insurance, if you were receiving it through your employer. As if worrying about making ends meet wasn’t problem enough, so many of us are worrying about keeping ourselves and our families healthy. Luckily, there are ways to cope with this situation, so don’t toss your health hopes out the window just yet.
Make Health Insurance a Priority
It’s very tempting to think that you can just do without when it comes to health insurance. You’re having to cut corners all over the place, tightening the financial belt, but once place it is risky and unsafe to do this is your health care. If you or someone in your family had any kind of serious illness or accident while you weren’t covered by insurance, you could be paying off those bills for the rest of your life. Trying to extend your former company’s health insurance through COBRA could eat through all of your monthly income. You can start by looking into purchasing your own health insurance through a provider, but do your homework first.
Does your spouse still have their health insurance? If you haven’t explored this option before, try and find out if you’re eligible to be covered under their health insurance. Sometimes employer plans won’t cover spouses through anything but the delightfully vague “qualifying events,” and unemployment might just be one of them.
If you have a somewhat good idea of how long you will be needing non-employer provided insurance, many health insurance carriers will offer short- and long-term options. You can buy health insurance plans ranging from one to six months, and those can usually be extended an additional six months if need be. These plans don’t offer routine care like seeing a physician, but they will cover you in the event of unexpected sicknesses and injuries. Learn more about temporary health insurance here.
Take Preventative Measures Now, Thank Yourself Later
If you still have a job and still have your insurance, count your blessings, but don’t start counting your chickens before they are hatched. Although there is hope for the economy to take an upswing in 2010, you never want to look a gift horse in the mouth (tired of the proverbs yet?) Dig around in your company’s health care program to look for free health improvement programs. These include health risk evaluations, routine screenings and weight management programs, and they often come with financial incentives used to encourage employees to maintain good health.
Your company may offer gift cards for keeping your annual cancer screenings on track, which is a great added bonus incentive to just being healthy. If you take care of all the resources you have available to you right now, you won’t be kicking yourself later, should you find yourself needing unemployment health insurance.
photo credit: philcampbell
May 11th, 2010 at 8:40 pm
I always make sure that my family gets Health Insurance from very reputable companies. health insurance is very important these days.