BlueCross BlueShield of Illinois Temporary Health Insurance Plans 

Carla moved to Chicago right out of college to accept a position with a small firm that handled website design. After she had been working there for a few months, the company suddenly closed its doors, declaring it was bankrupt. This left Carla with no job and no health insurance.

She wasn’t too worried about landing another job, but losing her healthcare benefits worried her a lot. She called a few insurance companies, and was relieved to hear that there are many temporary health insurance plans available in Illinois.

What is Temporary Health Insurance?

Temporary health insurance, or short term, is tailor-made for people like Carla who have temporarily lost their health insurance plans. People often rely on gap insurance when they are job hunting or between jobs, or when they are close to retirement and waiting to become eligible for Medicare. Students, too, find temporary health policies tremendously useful after graduation when they are shopping around for their first full-time position.

These temporary plans can last from 30 days to 180 days. In most instances, after the policy has expired, it can be renewed for another specified term. However, an individual can’t enroll in a third benefit term within the same calendar year. Gap insurance is not subject to HIPAA guidelines, and therefore can decline to cover pre-existing conditions, even if the client has not had an insurance lapse. Therefore, the plan is meant to be used only for unforeseen medical issues. It is not as helpful if you are trying to manage a chronic condition such as diabetes or heart disease.

People who elect to use long-term health insurance can control the premiums to a certain extent be selecting the length of the policy and the deductible they are willing to pay. The deductible is the amount that you must spend out-of-pocket before the insurance becomes effective. The higher the deductible, the less the premium costs.

By doing a little sleuthing, Carla discovered that Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Illinois offered a temporary health insurance plan called SelecTEMP PPO. Carla spoke to an agent and decided this was the best plan for her, because the doctor she’d been seeing was enrolled in the preferred network, and because the company offered so much latitude in allowing Carla to choose the time frame and the deductible that worked best for her.

Carla thought that with her skills, she could probably find another job within two months; she added a month to her policy length to provide a cushion should job-hunting be harder than anticipated. She had quite a bit of money in her savings account, so she felt comfortable choosing a relatively high deductible of $2500. (She could have gone as low as $500 or as high as $5000.)

For Carla, short-term health insurance worked exactly the way it was meant to. She got accepted into the SelecTEMP PPO plan about three days after her previous employers had closed their doors. It took her six weeks to find another job, and she had to work there full-time for a month before she became eligible for insurance benefits. Her policy expired less than two weeks after her new coverage began. Luckily, she did not have a major medical problem during the time she spent out of work, but if she had been involved in an accident or developed a serious illness, she had the peace of mind of knowing that the did not have to worry about her healthcare coverage.

So if you are considering temporary or short term health insurance, contact one of Senior Services of Illinois’ licensed insurance specialists to assist you in the process of providing affordable quality coverage.