Thursday, October 13, 2016

Sad (Potential) Vendor Trick

So a few weeks ago, got an email from an outfit called "Agent Pipeline" touting a new (to me, anyway) product called "Minimum Essential Coverage Plans." These are stripped down plans that meet the strict ACA guidelines enough that policyholders avoid the ObamaTax,  but because they're pretty bare-bones supposedly save money.

I'm currently working on an interesting case where there are a sizable number of employees who don't qualify for the group health plan (hours worked) but manage to make too much to qualify for Medicaid. So I thought that perhaps this might be something to look into for those folks.

The plan covers the general Minimum Essential benefits (preventive care, x-rays, etc), and is quite affordable: about $150 a month for a single person. It also covers quite a range of telemedicine services, and because it's not an ObamaPlan, one can enroll outside Open Enrollment without a qualifying event.

So, pretty sweet-looking, but I had a few questions:
1 – Is this available for groups/employer-based only, or for individuals, as well? Also, what about associations?

2 – If group, what’s minimum size, and are there participation requirements (either number of people and/or employer premium contributions)?

3 – Pretty sure I know the answer to this, but what about catastrophic claims (cancer, etc)?

4 – The brochure says you’ll accept $$ from HSA accounts, but these plans aren’t on the 213d list of approved expenses. How does that work here?
These seem pretty obvious, simple things to me, and so I expected a prompt reply.

That was two weeks ago, with a helpful nagmail in-between, and still none.

'Tis a shame, no?
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