Signed up for health insurance on my partner’s plan through her employer, terminated it after we were billed 3x as much as we understood it to cost. Now outside of open enrollment and having a hard time navigating this weird situation.
Hi all,
So this is a weird scenario I know so I'll do my best to summarize. I terminated my health insurance through the marketplace in December of 2022. The reason for this is my partner got a new job, and was planning on getting on their health insurance. We sat down on one busy day after work and scrolled through plan options and pricing, and it appeared to both of us that our shared coverage was going to be cheaper than each of our individual plans. She had to navigate it with her employer and HR, so I was pretty hands off but I told her to go ahead with it and that I would terminate my individual coverage.
She had many many phone calls with HR explaining pricing and coverage etc, and we purchased coverage starting for January that was going to get pulled from her paycheck. (By the way, she works for the largest medical employer in the state, so it was pretty good seeming coverage)
Then comes the first billing statement and our cost for insurance was 3X what we expected it to be. We freaked out a bit, looked back at all the paperwork and coverage, and realized that in VERY small fine print next to the price, it said "$xxx per PAY PERIOD" and we were reading it as "$xxx per MONTH). Things still were not adding up, so she called HR and they explained to her that me being her domestic partner, my coverage was taxed very heavily, which was never ever explained to either of us when we were gathering information. I was not on the phone for the conversation, but my girlfriend essentially got them to drop all of the cost for my half of the insurance because it was not well explained. That is great, but now I find myself out of open enrollment, and not qualifying for a special enrollment period after a very frustrating conversation with my state agency yesterday.
Any guidance at all? TIA.
tldr: gf voluntarily canceled my health insurance through her employer after the cost ended up being 3x as much as expected which we can't afford. now I'm outside of open enrollment and not qualifying for special enrollment.
submitted by /u/neilthefarmer
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