Ask Nancy: Is there a way to get into the new high-risk pool without going uninsured for six months?

Question: My husband and I are 57 years old and live in Arizona. We are early retirees, too young for Medicare, but with pre-existing conditions that make it impossible to be covered by any plan except a guaranteed issue plan with extremely high premiums and poor coverage. Last year, about half of our modest income went to cover health care!

Will we be able to drop our current private insurance and sign up for coverage under the new high-risk pool for people with pre-existing conditions? The last thing we want to do is go without insurance for six months and risk everything we've tried so hard to avoid. But from everything I've read, it seems that is what we'll have to do.

We are the people the high-risk pools were designed to help. We just happen to have made it a priority to have health insurance, even though that insurance is eating us alive. What are our options?

Answer: It's a pity Arizona's health insurance consumer protections aren't as attractive as its scenic splendors and benign climate. The state allows insurance companies to turn down people with pre-existing conditions but does not provide them the backup option of a state high-risk pool. You have experienced the results for yourself: out-of-sight premiums in your guaranteed issue plan, which I'm assuming you got as conversion coverage or through exercising your HIPAA rights. You are correct in your understanding of the new national high-risk pool Yes, it will likely be less costly than the plan you have now. And, no, you can't join it unless you have been uninsured for six months.

Your only consolation is that when full reform starts in 2014, you can buy whatever plan you want, with subsidies if your income qualifies you. (Though not if Arizona's state government can help it; Governor Jan Brewer recently signed a law paving the way for the state to sue to overturn national health reform.)

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