Not that she's planning any accidents, but...

August 31, 2009 6:49 PM

Massachusetts Health Insurance Filter: Is there a way to find some kind of bridge coverage for the time between 9/9, when the old insurance goes away, and 10/1, when the new insurance becomes effective?

I'm posting for my girlfriend. Her COBRA insurance expires on 9/9, but all of the insurance options she can find won't start until 10/1. It doesn't matter too much what the insurance is over those 3 weeks or so, as long as it's not "no insurance". it would be nice to have *some* kind of insurance in case a meteor hits her or something.

None of the insurance options on the Mass Connector website seem to start before 10/1.

Unfortunately, we don't have access to a time machine, so she can't fix this so that her new insurance starts on 9/1.

posted by rmd1023 to work & money (6 comments total)

I would check out Commonwealth Choice through Mass Connector; I did this last year to get 30 days of coverage for my family.

Another choice is to COBRA for a month.
posted by dzaz at 2:41 AM on September 1

Commonwealth Choice appears to require a snail-mail application to qualify for it. Do they move fast enough? How fast did it take you to go through the process?

The COBRA folks have initially said that they won't extend coverage for another month. (It's been 18 months or whatever the nominal limit is)
posted by rmd1023 at 4:01 AM on September 1

Try ehealthinsurance.com. They will sell short-term everyone-accepted health insurance to close the gap between policies.
posted by brain at 4:44 AM on September 1

Apparently, they'll sell everyone-accepted health insurance to people who don't live in our zip code. *shakes fist*
posted by rmd1023 at 5:18 AM on September 1

okay, it looks like the fix was to explicitly cancel her insurance effective the day the COBRA expires, and with that in hand, push the new insurance company to start the coverage then. i don't know if she'll be gapless, but the gap will only be about 5 days if there is one.
posted by rmd1023 at 5:22 AM on September 4

final followup -- cancelling the old insurance and using that to push the insurance company to start the new insurance on the same day worked. (both old and new were the same insurance company, just a different plan.)
posted by rmd1023 at 12:34 PM on October 1