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Renewing Marketplace Coverage
This year, I was covered under Plan A for part of the year. Then I lost my job and became eligible for Medicaid. I stopped paying premiums and assumed that would automatically cancel my Plan A coverage. Now I’m working again and eligible for premium tax credits and would like to sign up for Plan A again next year, but the insurer says I owe back premium and must repay it before my Plan A coverage will take effect. I can’t afford this amount. What can I do?
You may have several options.
- Call the insurer to explain your situation and ask if they will reconsider. If they won’t, ask if they would accept partial repayment or installment repayment
- Report this problem to the Marketplace and to your state insurance regulator and ask their help resolving the problem
- Review Marketplace plan options offered by any other insurers and consider signing up for one of those
In the future, if you should need to disenroll from a plan mid-year, it is important to actively disenroll and not just stop premium payments. In HealthCare.gov states, you can log into your Marketplace account and select the option to terminate coverage. This will also create a written record that you took this action.