How to Take You Employer Coverage when You Change Jobs

Male: If I change jobs, can I take my employer coverage with me?
Bob: Yeah most of us get our health insurance coverage from our employer, you know, about roughly 60 percent of us get our health insurance coverage from our employer. But the fact is actually that number has declined over the last few years, it was as high as 67, 68 percent as recently as the year 2000. And so the number of us getting our coverage thru our employer is shrinking. And in the most, in most cases you cannot take your coverage with you when you leave your employer. There are some extension of your existing coverage opportunities that often referred to as Cobra Coverage. Cobra Coverage is typically if you’re in a qualified employer, you can actually take your employers’ sponsored health insurance plan for some period of time, usually 18 months. And the thought behind that is simply gives you a bridge while you’re looking for your new employer. But not all employers qualify under Cobra, and so you may not have any coverage when you leave your employer, or you may lose your coverage. And so that’s one of the downside, frankly, to employer’s sponsored coverage or getting your coverage thru your company. When you buy your health insurance on your own, you own it, it goes with you. So you can change jobs and you can keep your insurance coverage in place and obviously some of the benefits of that is you get to keep your doctors in place and you get to keep pharmacies in place and you’re gonna continue to access the hospital that you’re most familiar with. So, having your health insurance associated or tied to yourself can be very powerful when it comes to changing jobs.


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