Trying to Find an Affordable Health Insurance Policy For Your Grandchild? Have You Tried a Child-Only Health Insurance Policy?

If you are raising a grandchild (or grandchildren) and have recently retired, you may have just now realized that you could have a serious problem: how to find affordable, low-cost health insurance for your child.  If you’ve retired, chances are, you’re no longer able to keep your grandchild on your employer’s group health insurance plan, and even though Medicare may cover your medical costs but it won’t cover your grandchildren or any children for that matter.

What to do, what to do?

Well, this is where a health insurance policy for your grandchild can come in, and for most, a child-only health insurance policy is the best answer for an affordable, low-cost health insurance policy. A child-only health insurance policy is exactly what it sounds like, a health insurance policy which only covers a child for its healthcare expenses. Because the health insurance policy does not have to cover any adults who are more likely to have expensive pre-existing conditions, child-only health insurance policies have generally been an affordable, relatively low-cost way to go for families to cover their children, even when they can’t afford health insurance for other members of the family.

Unfortunately, the one wrinkle in this is that with healthcare reform, some health insurers have exited the child-only health insurance market. Healthcare reform requires health insurers to accept children for health insurance even if they have pre-existing conditions which have made offering child-only health insurance policies much less lucrative than they were before. (After all, if health insurers are required to take children even when they are sick, there is really no reason for families not to wait until children are sick to get health insurance.)

Many states have developed open-enrollment periods for child-only health insurance policies to give health insurers incentive to return to the market. Generally, dhild-only health insurance policy premiums are held to one level if you enroll your child during an open enrollment period, and are likely to be much higher the rest of the year. If you are interested in getting a child-only health insurance policy for your child or grandchild, you should look at when the child-only open enrollment period(s) are in your state.

Do you have a child-only health insurance policy for your child or grandchild? Tell us about it!

Related posts:

1. Healthcare Reform: Putting your Adult Child on Your Health Insurance Policy… Is It Worth It?
2. Open Enrollment For Child-Only Health Insurance in Washington State Opens Today!
3. Two Weeks Left for Children’s Open Enrollment in California; Health Insurance Premiums to Go Up on March 1st
4. Reminder: Open Enrollment for California Child-Only Health Insurance Ends Tuesday
5. Healthcare Reform: Why Can’t I Put My Child On My Health Insurance Until January?