With more and more people out of work these days, the question repeatedly arises…what to do about one's health insurance policy?The numbers of people on unemployment or using food stamps are at record highs, and quotes Senator Sherrod Brown of Ohio as saying, "This shows why — no matter how bad the condition of the economy — we can't delay pursuing comprehensive health care."

Looking at a real case of workers from a cookie plant in Ohio that abruptly closed in October, and this company also failed to pay for its employee's health insurance benefits for its final month. This has put not only the former company, but its former workers, in dire straits. People are not getting the care they need, not taking their medicine as often to save money, and the dozens of other little things the uninsured do to survive.

In certain cases, COBRA is not an option for people laid off from jobs. In many cases the reasoning for this is due to the fact that the cost of full premium for health care insurance is too high of a burden to handle. These losses are also taking its affect on hospitals as well. When it was once believed that the health care industry was immune to downturns in the economy, it appears that people are now not able to afford health care, and as a result, the health care industry is taking a hit on revenues.

Hopefully president-elect Obama's claim to want to provide universal and comprehensive health insurance comes through, because people like this certainly could use all the help they could get.

CBS news has an article entitled, "Surviving A Layoff," in which they give tips on how to survive getting laid off from your job. These tips include getting a letter of recommendation from your former employer, acquiring unemployment and so on. On the matter of health insurance, the article recommends getting a COBRA or individual health care plan in order to keep your health insurance coverage active. Again, the challenge that many face is the high cost of individual plans or COBRA. For many, they will go without insurance until they can get another job.

Forbes recently published an article, "Factors to consider when buying a health insurance." Finding health insurance is something one should do for themselves or their family once they're laid off. According to the article, several factors should be taken into account when searching for your own health insurance coverage. These factors include your own needs (prescription drugs, out of network doctors, etc), out of pocket costs, how high the co-payments are, the quality of care and so on. When you are trying to manage without an income, if purchasing short term or individual insurance, taking a higher deductible may make sense if you feel that your insurance needs will be minimal, and infrequent. Take a look at government sponsored plans, and welfare plans.

Losing a job is never a good thing. Knowing that we are in turbulent times, it may make sense to start saving and building up a reserve to hold over in the event of an unplanned job loss. Preventative medicine is also a good idea. Take care of your self now, and minimize the long term health needs that may arise from neglect.

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This entry was posted on Thursday, July 16th, 2009 at 9:39 pm and is filed under Insurance. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.