Currently unemployed in NYC. Quality of coverage between COBRA and Medicaid?

Hey folks,

I left my previous job in October, and I expect to be unemployed for the foreseeable future. (Doing some research into a career shift.)

This means that my income is effectively $0, and since I live in NYC, I qualify for NY’s Medicaid. However, the Medicaid application is still processing, and in the meantime I’ve been paying ~$650 a month to continue my previous employer’s insurance through COBRA.

The reason the Medicaid application is still processing is because NY State wants to determine whether they’ll pay for my COBRA premiums, through NY’s Health Insurance Premium Payment (HIPP) program.

So the COBRA payment for December is coming up (December 1), and I don’t think they’ll get back to me fast enough. Ideally, to save money I’d just cancel COBRA and switch to Medicaid. But I’m unsure about the quality of benefits between COBRA and NY Medicaid, and I don’t want to end up with (potentially) low quality Medicaid benefits.

So my questions are:

  1. Is anyone familiar with the quality of benefits provided by NYC Medicaid? Will they be worse than my COBRA plan (Anthem PPO), and should I stick with my COBRA?
  2. Or should I stop my COBRA payments (because that $650 is quite hefty), and just switch to Medicaid?

submitted by /u/ntide
[link] [comments]
Hey folks, I left my previous job in October, and I expect to be unemployed for the foreseeable future. (Doing some research into a career shift.) This means that my income is effectively $0, and since I live in NYC, I qualify for NY’s Medicaid. However, the Medicaid application is still processing, and in the meantime I’ve been paying ~$650 a month to continue my previous employer’s insurance through COBRA. The reason the Medicaid application is still processing is because NY State wants to determine whether they’ll pay for my COBRA premiums, through NY’s Health Insurance Premium Payment (HIPP) program. So the COBRA payment for December is coming up (December 1), and I don’t think they’ll get back to me fast enough. Ideally, to save money I’d just cancel COBRA and switch to Medicaid. But I’m unsure about the quality of benefits between COBRA and NY Medicaid, and I don’t want to end up with (potentially) low quality Medicaid benefits. So my questions are:
Is anyone familiar with the quality of benefits provided by NYC Medicaid? Will they be worse than my COBRA plan (Anthem PPO), and should I stick with my COBRA? Or should I stop my COBRA payments (because that $650 is quite hefty), and just switch to Medicaid?

submitted by /u/ntide [link] [comments]Read Morer/HealthInsurance

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