Five Things to Know About Choos­ing Health Insur­ance for 2020

Did you pur­chase health cov­er­age through your state’s health insur­ance exchange last year? If not, are you still unin­sured? If you answered yes to either ques­tion, you may ben­e­fit from these tips about choos­ing health insur­ance dur­ing this year’s Afford­able Care Act—aka Obamacare—open enroll­ment period.

1. For 2020 health plans, open enroll­ment runs until Decem­ber 15 in most states—but not all of them.

You can enroll in a new mar­ket­place plan—or change your exist­ing plan—until Decem­ber 15, 2019 in most states. Cur­rently, the fol­low­ing states have extended open enroll­ment dead­lines:

• Cal­i­for­nia: Jan­u­ary 15, 2020 (per­ma­nent exten­sion)
• Col­orado: Jan­u­ary 15, 2020 (per­ma­nent exten­sion)
• Dis­trict of Colum­bia: Jan­u­ary 31, 2020 (per­ma­nent exten­sion)
• Idaho: Decem­ber 16, 2019
• Mass­a­chu­setts: Jan­u­ary 23, 2020
• Min­nesota: Decem­ber 23, 2019
• New York: Jan­u­ary 31, 2020
• Rhode Island: Decem­ber 31, 2019

No mat­ter where you live, if want or need new cov­er­age begin­ning Jan­u­ary 1, 2020, you should sign up by the end of the day on Decem­ber 15.

For more infor­ma­tion, see Your State’s Open Enroll­ment Dead­line for 2020 Health Plans.

2. Auto­matic re-​enrollment isn’t as good as it sounds.

If you pur­chased an indi­vid­ual or fam­ily plan through the mar­ket­place last year and you do noth­ing this year, you’ll be auto­mat­i­cally re-​enrolled in your cur­rent plan for 2020—as long as the plan is still avail­able. Auto enroll­ment sounds handy, but it could lead to unpleas­ant sur­prises: your monthly pre­mium may change, your eli­gi­bil­ity for sub­si­dies may fall out of date. In some cases, you may even be auto­mat­i­cally enrolled in a dif­fer­ent plan if your insurer stops offer­ing your exist­ing cov­er­age.

Recently, CNBC Make It pub­lished a sur­vey show­ing that only 15% of Amer­i­cans plan to change up their health insur­ance this year. They con­cluded that num­ber should prob­a­bly be higher, and we agree.

Be proac­tive dur­ing this open enroll­ment period. Visit your health insur­ance exchange to learn about your options when choos­ing health insur­ance for 2020. (If you get your insur­ance through your job, sit down with the plans your employer offers learn the details.) Update any per­sonal or income infor­ma­tion that’s changed dur­ing the year, then make an informed choice about your cov­er­age.

3. Neglect­ing to update income infor­ma­tion could be an expen­sive mis­take.

As you prob­a­bly know by now, the Afford­able Care Act pro­vides sub­si­dies that lower monthly health insur­ance pre­mi­ums for many peo­ple. But for finan­cial assis­tance to work prop­erly, you must re-​evaluate it each year. If your income changes, your sub­sidy amount may rise or fall.

If you don’t report cor­rect income infor­ma­tion, you may not get the finan­cial aid for which you qual­ify. On the flip side, if you’ve claimed too much assis­tance, you may have to pay the IRS back at tax time.

You don’t have to wait until open enroll­ment to report income changes; you’re sup­posed to update impor­tant infor­ma­tion through­out the year. But open enroll­ment is a good time to dou­ble check your per­sonal infor­ma­tion and update your data if nec­es­sary.

4. There’s no more fed­eral tax penalty for going with­out health insur­ance, but …

You prob­a­bly already know that the fed­eral tax penalty for being unin­sured has gone away. That means that if you didn’t have health insur­ance cov­er­age this year, you won’t have to pay a penalty when you file your fed­eral taxes in 2020.

That said, a hand­ful of states have passed their own health insur­ance require­ments. You may face a state tax penalty if you are unin­sured in one of these states.

And even though there’s no more fed­eral tax penalty, ask your­self whether it really makes sense to forego health insur­ance. A med­ical cri­sis could do more dam­age than a penalty ever would. (A study pub­lished ear­lier this year showed that a lapse in health insur­ance cov­er­age can dou­ble a per­son’s chances of end­ing up in bank­ruptcy.) And if you miss open enroll­ment and find your­self need­ing cov­er­age mid-​year, you’ll prob­a­bly have to wait until 2021 to get it.

For more infor­ma­tion on health insur­ance require­ments and exemp­tions in your state, see Do You Have to Get Oba­macare?

5. You can get help choos­ing health insur­ance and fill­ing out your appli­ca­tion.

There are many resources avail­able to help you choose a health insur­ance plan and com­plete your appli­ca­tion. You can get free help from a trained sup­port spe­cial­ist online, over the phone, or in per­son. For details, see Get Help Find­ing an Insur­ance Plain in Your State.

If you want one-​on-​one assis­tance from a trained pro­fes­sional who can rec­om­mend a health insur­ance plan based on your indi­vid­ual cir­cum­stances, you can con­tact an insur­ance agent or bro­ker. (Unlike gov­ern­ment funded assis­tants, bro­kers are legally per­mit­ted to sug­gest indi­vid­ual plans that may meet your needs.) For more, see How An Insur­ance Agent or Bro­ker Can Help You Sign Up for Oba­macare or call 1–800-943‑6832 to speak with a bro­ker directly. (Note that we receive adver­tis­ing income from the bro­kers who pro­vide ser­vices through this phone num­ber, all of whom sup­ply insur­ance plans that meet the stan­dards of the Afford­able Care Act.)