Beware of Ads for Trumpcare

If you see ads for Trump­care dur­ing this health insur­ance enroll­ment sea­son, keep in mind that there’s really no such thing as a “Trump­care” pro­gram. These pitches are just hooks to con­nect you with insur­ance bro­kers who most likely want to sell you a short-​term insur­ance plan that won’t pro­tect you when you need it most.

Last year, the Trump admin­is­tra­tion made it eas­ier to pur­chase such bare-​bones, short term insur­ance plans. The plans don’t have to cover pre­ex­ist­ing con­di­tions or the essen­tial health ben­e­fits pro­vided by Oba­macare (Afford­able Care Act) plans. In addi­tion, while the law used to restrict short-​term plans to three months, folks in most states can now pur­chase a non-​ACA com­pli­ant “short-​term” plan that lasts as long as three years. (Some states have placed more strin­gent restric­tions on short-​term plans, how­ever.)

Know What You’re Getting

In this era of con­fu­sion and out­right decep­tion with regard to health insur­ance, the dan­ger is that con­sumers who don’t under­stand the dif­fer­ences between short-​term and com­pre­hen­sive cov­er­age will buy what seem to be afford­able plans, think­ing they’re cov­ered when they’re not. Bloomberg Busi­ness­week recently high­lighted this issue, pro­fil­ing a fam­ily — the Diazes — fac­ing more than $244,00 in med­ical bills. An insur­ance bro­ker led the Diazes to believe they had com­pre­hen­sive cov­er­age when, in truth, their plan offered min­i­mal benefits.

Not long after, the FTC shut down sev­eral insur­ance sell­ers prof­fered by the same com­pany who con­nected the Diaz fam­ily with their bro­ker , say­ing:

At the request of the Fed­eral Trade Com­mis­sion, a fed­eral judge tem­porar­ily shut down a Florida-​based oper­a­tion that allegedly col­lected more than $100 mil­lion by prey­ing on Amer­i­cans in search of health insur­ance, sell­ing these con­sumers worth­less plans that left tens of thou­sands of peo­ple unin­sured. Many of these con­sumers have incurred sub­stan­tial med­ical expenses and have been stuck with thou­sands of dol­lars in unpaid med­ical bills.

Among many mis­lead­ing prac­tices, the shut-​down com­pa­nies some­times lured buy­ers by call­ing these poli­cies “Trump­care.”

Unfor­tu­nately, there’s no short­cut to good health insur­ance cov­er­age. Don’t sign up for a plan unless you see the details in writ­ing and under­stand what you’re getting.

More Infor­ma­tion

Open enroll­ment for 2020 health insur­ance plans starts on Novem­ber 1. (Except in Cal­i­for­nia, where it began on Octo­ber 15.) In most states, you’ll have until Decem­ber 15 to com­pare plans and choose the one that best meets your needs.

To learn more about find­ing afford­able health insur­ance in your state, see our Afford­able Care Act learn­ing cen­ter.