I cant cancel my health insurance with my job until november???

Question

I worked for this company since feb and they offered me health insurance "united health care", im a college student and didnt have insurance, so i signed up. I went to the ER twice in a week, the hospital stated there was a problem with my insurance. I called the company while at the er and they said they could not help me with my 1000 bill, they would pay a 100 annual for er visits and i could go to the doctors offfice once a year and they cover no prescribtions. So i told them i wanted to cancel and get other insurance else where. The company said no the government wants to see that i have found health coverage else where......in other words i have to pay the 900 bill myself prescribtions and pay them until i find another company. SO I SAID FINE W.E

Answer 1

Evidently November is the month when your annual enrollment period comes up with your employer. What this means is during annual enrollment you can change, add, or drop coverage. After this period is up, you are locked in to the choices you've made the entire year. The only way you can make changes outside of this period is if a special circumstance comes up, as it did in your case, you were able to add coverage as a new hire when your employment began. Other special circumstances examples would be like if you quit, or if you had a baby, you could add the baby after he/she was born, if you got married, you could add your spouse, etc. Obviously the benefits administrator or whoever handles this at your job did not do a good job of explaining your coverage options to you. It sounds like you might work for a small company who doesn't have many employees.  If you are part of a small group, that is why your rate is high and coverage stinks. The more employees a company has, the better group rate the company can get and offer their employees. You might not want to quit this job to stop your insurance payments from being taken out of your pay, but it sounds like you've found a decent plan elsewhere that you are happy with. Sounds like you found an individual plan that is portable, (not tied to where you work) so, you could keep the new plan if you got employment elsewhere. This may not be an option for you, only you know the answer to this. You could even find another job that offers better group insurance at a decent rate than the one you have now. Hope this helped. Best wishes

Answer 2

Go to your state regulations on Insurance. I do not think that you can be forced to stay with that Insurance Company - regardless of who is paying. You send them proof, they verify and that is it.

Go to your state regulations on insurance.