Buying Health Insurance on the Exchanges

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Buying Health Insurance on the Exchanges

The health insurance exchanges, also known as insurance marketplaces, allow you to comparison shop for medical and dental insurance in a variety of ways. These include online, over the phone, or through representatives of community healthcare organizations in your community. The federal government exchange is located at healthcare.gov online or via a toll-free line 24 hours a day, seven days a week at 1-800-318-2596. Many states have their own exchanges; if you live in a state without exchanges, you will use the federal exchange to find health insurance.

Healthcare.gov Website

If you have a computer at home or access to one at work or at a public library, the healthcare.gov Website makes it possible to shop for health insurance and sign up for a plan. The first step is to create an account, where you provide basic information about yourself and your family. You also provide information about your family income to determine if you are eligible for a subsidy that will help pay part of your monthly health insurance premium.

Once you’ve created an account, you can shop for insurance. The Website makes it easy to compare both medical and dental insurance with different levels of coverage and different premium costs. You can also shop for insurance without creating an account, but you cannot enroll yourself or your family without creating an account.

The enrollment process

The enrollment process is fairly simple once you’ve selected a health insurance policy. The marketplace where you enrolled—either the federal exchange or a state exchange—automatically sends your application to the insurance company with the policy you selected.

You can either pay the first month’s premium immediately online or wait until your insurance company sends you your insurance documents and first month’s premium bill. There can be a delay of several weeks between when you enroll and when you receive your documents and bill. If you want to verify your coverage, call the toll-free number provided to you when your enrollment is verified on the exchange site.

Insurance tiers

Under healthcare reform, insurance companies can offer five types of plans:

• Bronze
• Silver
• Gold
• Platinum
• Catastrophic

Every plan must have similar benefits, but costs vary significantly based on which tier you select. Bronze and silver plans cost less per month, but have higher deductibles and co-pays. They involve higher out-of-pocket costs if you need a lot of healthcare in a given year.

If you select a gold or platinum plan, your monthly premiums will be higher, but you will have lower deductibles, co-pays and ultimately will pay less if you consume a lot of healthcare. You have to decide what works best for you—if it makes sense to spend more money to get a better plan or if you’d rather have a lower premium and pay more for care. Catastrophic plans are bare-bones plans that require you to pay all of your health care costs up to a specific amount, usually several thousands of dollars. They have few other benefits.

If you have a plan with a high deductible, you can open a health savings account. A health savings account allows you to save money before taxes to pay health care costs that aren’t covered by your health insurance plan.

NOTE: Legislation in 2024 and beyond may change cost-sharing subsidies and coverage provisions.