Three Health Insurances Only for Your Kid: Which One Should You Choose?

There are many cheap health insurance covers for kids. In this article we’re going to talk about three most important ones: Short-term health insurance, Children’s Health Insurance Program and Major medical plans. All parents want what’s best for their child. When your family is uninsured, you might be tempted to keep everyone safe so you won’t have to pay for medical care.

As a general idea, both parents and children should have minimum essential coverage, because it’s required under the Affordable Care Act. It’s not always the case with many families. Perhaps you want to get a health insurance for your kid.

Short-term health insurance

If you want temporary benefits, you might want to go for dependent-only coverage.

This insurance gives you from 30 to 364 days – it depends on the state. The child-only insurances are available for kids that are two years or older. The advantage here is the money, they cost less than others. The rates are lower for this one because they offer coverage to help you pay for unexpected cases, or high-cost illnesses. However, it’s not considered to be a minimum essential coverage that goes ok with the ACA’s individual mandate, and they do not include vaccinations, behavioral assessment, or autism screening. Not even hearing and vision screening. As a general rule, the stronger the short-term plan benefits, the higher you’ll have to pay.

There are many different health plans with different types of coverage. Connect Plus offers limited benefits for some pre-existing conditions – and not many have this benefit. A pre-existing condition is any kind of medical condition that came up before you started to coverage with the new health insurance policy.

You might want to go for this if your child is two years old, or older, if he or she is qualified for an exemption from the ACA’s mandate, or if he or she does not qualify for an ACA subsidy and needs an affordable health insurance. Also, you can get it if your kid needs coverage very quickly, like tomorrow.

Major medical health insurance

The major medical insurance is a policy made to help you pay for covered healthcare expenses that come from preventive services to emergency care. The ACA (short for Affordable Care Act) requires all the major medical plans to have guaranteed issue and it basically includes the basic requirements – the ten essential health benefits.

If your kid needs a long-term health insurance (that’s for more than 90 days), then a major medical health insurance is what you should go for. It’s true, they may cost more, but they do qualify as minimum essential coverage, and they include no-cost preventive care services and healthcare services for about ten categories from the ACA. They are

also guaranteed issue, and that means that your child won’t be denied the coverage, based on his or her health history or pre-existing conditions – they all must be covered.

It covers emergency services and hospitalization, mental health care, maternity and newborn care and ambulatory patient services. Also, it includes prescription drugs, lab services, habilitative services and devices, pediatric services, vision and oral care, and health services and chronic disease management. It really depends on the coverage you have. And the coinsurance and deductible amounts, plus the network restrictions have an impact on how much money you’ll have to pay for the insurance.

Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP)

CHIP is short for Children’s Health Insurance Program and it’s available for all the kids from families that earn too much actually to qualify for Medicaid, however, not enough to buy a family or an individual health insurance plan from a state-based exchange or from the private market.

The thing with this one is that each state makes up its own CHIP eligibility requirements, which means that the program differs from one state to another.

Overall, it provides the standard Medicaid benefit package and periodic and early screening, diagnostic and treatments. It also comes with mental and dental services.

There are also some separate CHIP benefits, like benchmark coverage, Benchmark-Equivalent coverage or secretary-approved coverage.

Benchmark coverage is based on the State employee’s coverage plan and the HMO plan. Also, on the standard Blue Cross or Blue Shield preferred provider option that’s offered to Federal employees

Benchmark-Equivalent coverage includes Physician’s services, Laboratory and x-ray services, Inpatient (and outpatient) hospital services, surgical and any kind of medical services and Well-baby and well-child care (including immunization).

Secretary-approved coverage offers any other kind of health coverage that’s acceptable by the Secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

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