I'm Ben Gonzalez and this is TDI. Well, this is a time of year when a lot of
people are looking at their health insurance options for the coming year, so we thought
we'd offer some tips on how to shop for a new health plan. Joining us today is Mistie Hinote from our
Public Affairs Division. Hi Mistie, if I’m a new shopper or looking
for a better health plan than I currently have, where can I find and buy health insurance
from? There are four main options. The first one is your employer. Ask them if they offer a plan, and sometimes
they might even pay for the plan or pay for a portion of it. Another option is your spouse’s plan, maybe
his or her employer offers a plan that you can get on, and if your employer and your
spouse’s employer both offer a plan, look at them to see if the price and the benefits
are better on one over the other.
The third option is you can stay on your parents
plan until you're 26-years-old. You don't have to live at home, you don't
have to be enrolled in school, and you don't have to be a dependent, so that's a good option. Then the last option is to buy your own plan. You can go to an insurance company or healthcare.gov. Now, if I do go to healthcare.gov, there's
some important dates coming up that we need to keep in mind, correct? Right. Open enrollment for the marketplace ends on
January 15, but if you want a plan that starts in the New Year on January 1, then the enrollment
deadline is going to be December 15.
So, no matter where I’m shopping, what are
some things to keep in mind when I’m selecting that plan? You want to look at the plan and make sure
it’s going to work for you. By that we mean you want to look at the benefits. If you have a medical issue, if you have a
mental health issue, you want to be sure there's benefits in that plan that you can use. The same thing goes for your doctors and your
prescriptions. If you have a doctor you really like, that
you want to keep using, you want to make sure that plan is going to let you keep going to
the doctor, and then the medicines, you want to make sure the plan is going to cover the
medicines that you need and usually you can go to their website, and check out the doctors
and the prescriptions or you can call them, and they'll let you know if these things are
covered. You also want to look at the price, the out-of-pocket
cost, and by that we mean what you're going to have to pay.
Most people think about the premium you have
to pay, but there's also the copays and the deductibles. The copay is what you pay every time you go
to the doctor, and then the deductible is the part of your health care that you have
to pay. If you see a plan that kind of has a lower
premium, look at the benefits, they might not be as great as another plan. The out-of-pocket costs, those copays those
deductibles might be higher, and if you're okay with that, going with a lower premium
and a higher deductible, then go for it, you just want to be aware of that before you start. The last thing you want to do is check to
see which state or federal agency regulates that plan, because if you have a problem with
the plan, you want to know where to go to get help.
You mentioned cost in there, and that's probably
going to be a primary driver for a lot of people, so what can they do if the budget
is really limited? The first thing is to check those four options
to see which one might be the best for you. If you do go to healthcare.gov, you might
be eligible for a premium tax credit. Those are also called subsidies, so that's
based on your household annual income for 2022.
This year, more people are going to be eligible
for subsidies than have been in the past, and some people might get even bigger subsidies
than they have in the past, so if you've gone to healthcare.gov before and you haven't had
any luck, try it again this year, because these changes might affect you. If I still need a little more help shopping
or I just need some tips, where can I go? We have a great shopping guide on our website,
it goes over some of the checklist items I told you about, and then a lot of other things
to consider when you're looking for a health plan. Perfect. Thanks, Mistie. Well, you can definitely find that shopping
guide on our website, it's tdi.texas.gov, and just type in shopping guide in the search
box at the top of the page, and if you have a question that you can't find an answer to,
you can always call our helpline, that's 800-252-3439, and they can go over your options. For Mistie Hinote, I’m Ben Gonzalez, this
is TDI..
