Suffer Consequences if You Let Health Insurance Lapse

If you are between jobs and you are considering not paying for health insurance benefits, you may need to look at alternative interim insurance coverage. Health insurance is the law that allows employees to keep their health insurance coverage for 18 months once they leave their job by paying expensive premiums. While health insurance is the good one, Less expensive medical plans may be an important and necessary expense.

All new health insurance plans are allowed to force new subscribers to suffer a 12 month waiting period for pre-existing conditions. Fortunately there is another law that allows for portability of coverage without having to suffer pre-existing condition waiting periods. That law says that if you have had CONTINUOUS COVERAGE for the 12 months prior to and leading up to the beginning of the new insurance coverage, you will be given credit toward any new pre-existing condition waiting period. If you had 6 months of continuous health insurance coverage prior to taking out your new policy, 6 months would be applied to the 12 month waiting period and bring the new pre-existing condition waiting period down to 6 months. If you had 12 months of continuous coverage, you will not have any waiting period for a pre-existing condition on the new health insurance plan.

CONTINUOUS COVERAGE is defined as continuous health insurance coverage with no lapse of more than 62 days. If you go more than 62 days without coverage, you may have to suffer the full waiting period for pre-existing conditions. For example, if you were taking High Blood Pressure medication, you may have to wait 12 months after starting and paying for the new insurance before the insurance would cover the High Blood Pressure medication.

Maybe you need to know abit this, if your health insurance lapsed. You may not get the benefit in the policy list. Also your money will dissapear