Relocating Health Insurance

Moving and Health Insurance

When you move, there are several things to take into account that may impact your health insurance coverage. If you have an HMO plan, you are required to use physicians in the HMO's network. Moving may place you in area where there are no HMO participating physicians to choose from. At this point, your HMO plan may not be very useful to you, and if you visit a non-participating HMO physician, your health plan will probably deny your charges as "non covered services" and you would then be responsible to pay the entire charge.

You may contact your HMO to make sure you could switch primary care physicians and ensure that there are participating providers for your plan, or you could elect to purchase a different HMO plan. As for your medical records, electronic medical records (EMR) allow for portability between health care providers. Although there are websites which provide access to free EMR, it's also important to check if your current physician has implemented EMR to their practice.

If you have a PPO plan, you may not be bound by the restrictions of an HMO plan, because you are not required to see a physician within the PPO network though your benefits would be better if you did. The problem may arise if you move out of state and your health plan does not provide coverage to out of state residents. You must check with your health plan regarding this situation and ask if you will be impacted.

If you are switching jobs and are concerned about pre-existing of your new job's health plan, there is something available that will assist you. If you previously had been enrolled in a group plan and are switching to another group plan, you can use the time you were on the previous plan to satisfy the time requirements needed for pre-existing limitations of the new plan. This is a benefit from HIPAA (Health insurance portability and accountability act). For additional information on HIPAA please see our article by clicking here.

If you would like to search for a health plan in your new area, click here for a free quote.

Health Symphony provides general information and does not guarantee, express or implied, to the results obtained from its use.

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