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How to Buy Health Insurance - Being Uninsured

Is health insurance guaranteed in the United States?

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eHealth, Inc. is the parent company of eHealthInsurance Services Inc., the leading online source of health insurance for individuals, families and small businesses. eHealthInsurance presents complex health insurance information in an objective, user-friendly format, enabling the research, analysis, comparison and purchase of health insurance products that best meet consumers' needs.

Licensed to market and sell health insurance in all 50 states and the District of Columbia, eHealthInsurance has developed partnerships with more than 160 health insurance companies, offering more than 7,000 health insurance products online.

The company's technology platform is able to communicate electronically with insurance carrier partners, which enables a simpler, more streamlined health insurance application process. This technical connection with the back-office processes of health insurance companies can facilitate rapid approval of applications and real-time communication between carrier and consumer throughout the process.

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Transcripts

Host: Is health insurance guaranteed in the United States?

Bob Hurley: Health insurance still is not guaranteed in all states. Some states have Guaranteed Issue, most of those states are in the north east, New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts Main. Washington state has an interesting program where it's kind of a risk pool where you can apply for coverage in Washington state and then if you have certain risk conditions you will automatically be put into a State High Risk Pool. So there are some states that don't necessarily guarantee coverage. Obviously, most states don't for individuals and family that are buying on their own.

So the bottom line here is if you are working for an employer that's offering coverage typically, you are going to be able get that coverage irregardless of whether you have a pre-existing condition or not. As soon as you go into the individual and family market segment which means basically, you are buying insurance for yourself and your family on your own, in most states you are going to underwritten and it's not guaranteed that you are going to get that coverage. I think the good news is as we do a whole lot of health insurance for families across this nation one of the largest distributor of health insurance to individuals and families and our statistics show that clearly, 85% of all of those who have applied for health insurance coverage are able to get covered and so then the challenge is those 15% that have a pre-existing condition and cannot.

There are many state programs that can help those folks. There are High Risk Pools in 33 states now that those folks can get covered in. It's typically more expensive but they can get some kind of coverage. So I always encourage people that if they do have a health condition certainly, call in advance before we set the process of the health insurance application because sometimes, we can get them into a category that is more likely to accept them, but then if that's not the case then we are going to redirect them to one of those programs where they can get some kind of, some level of coverage that maybe a state subsidized program or maybe a state program but the key would be that we would try to help them get that coverage.

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