Don't Call Covered California if Your Health Plan is Cancelled -

Don’t Call Covered California if your health plan is cancelled for non-payment. Covered California is wants to reduce the number of consumer calls about cancelled health insurance for non-payment. Covered California is working on ways to accelerate the reinstatement process after the plan has been cancelled.

Covered California can't help if your health plan was cancelled for non-payment. — Covered California can’t help if your health plan was cancelled for non-payment.

Covered California Can’t Help With Cancellation for Non-Payment

Many Covered California consumers are under the impression that Covered California handles the premium payments for their health plan. They don’t. All insurance premiums must be paid to the health plan you enrolled in. If you failed to make your monthly premium payments, and your plan is cancelled, you need to contact the health plan, not Covered California.

However, reinstatement into the plan can be slow. Covered California is working on a pilot program to help speed up the transfer of information between the health plans and Covered California once the plan is reinstated

Background on Covered California to speed up reinstatement process.

Covered California and Kaiser to pilot a bot program.

Only Insurance Company Can Reinstate Health Plan

There are many reasons why your premium payment was missed.

You forgot to mail the check.
Your address changed and you never received an invoice.
Your credit card expired or was cancelled for fraud.
The auto-pay feature for the health plan failed.
It was not clear that the new or change of enrollment through Covered California required creating a new auto-pay account.

Regardless of the reason for the cancellation, you need to work with the health plan to bring your account current. Covered California can still be of assistance if your health plan was terminated because of an error in processing or request for documentation.

Grace period for health plan premium payments.

30-Day Grace Period, 90-Day Reinstatement Period

There is no grace period for the first month’s binder payment, which you can make through the Covered California Enrollment Dashboard. It is the ability to make the first payment through Covered California that gives people the impression that they are handling premium payments. When you click on the Pay Now button, you are taken to the health plan’s payment portal.

Scenarios and grace period lengths of time.

There is a 30-day grace period once the health plan is active. If you go over the grace period, the insurance company will cancel the health plan and notify Covered California of the termination. Covered California consumers have a 90-day window to repay ALL the back premiums, bring the account current, and have the health plan reinstated.

Each insurance company has different rules for auto-payments.

If your health plan is completely cancelled and you are outside of your 90-day reinstatement window, you can’t get health insurance. Loss of Coverage because of non-payment of premiums is NOT a qualifying life event for a special enrollment period to re-enroll in a health plan.