Four Common Questions About Insurance For Your Child Answered!

We as parents do not want anything but the best for our children. And it feels like someone is tearing up a piece of our hearts when the child falls ill. No matter how grown up a person is and how sorted their life is, it is natural to feel helpless as a parent.

And all this panic only increases if your child does not have health insurance. At a time like now when the pandemic is wreaking havoc everywhere and children are in the high-risk group, it is more important now than ever to ensure your child has proper health insurance.

They need better medical coverage than ever before to avoid the hefty hospital bills and ensure they get quality healthcare. Sadly, most parents have numerous questions about getting health insurance for their child but are clueless about whom they could ask for help. Here we try to jot down the most frequently asked questions about child health insurance and provide you with the responses. At the end of this article, we hope to answer most of your child’s health insurance.

Do Children Get Free Medical Insurance?

The Children’s Health Insurance Program or CHIP aims at providing quality healthcare to children. They will implement it through numerous CHIP programs and Medicaid. These get funding from both the state and the federal governments. The best part is that these healthcare programs offer free to low-cost healthcare services to all the eligible kids. The children’s eligibility for these healthcare plans depends upon the family’s income.

All the children from low and middle-income group families alone are eligible for government-sponsored healthcare insurances. Besides that, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act has opened the gates for many private health insurance companies to pitch in too. They offer benefits similar to the ones that the Medicaid and CHIP offer. However, the cost involved might differ, so make sure you read the document carefully before signing on the dotted line.

What Is the Difference between Medicaid and CHIP?

The state and federal governments together sponsor both these insurances and provide similar benefits to the children. However, they differ in terms of the scope of coverage. This means, while Medicaid covers only the poorest families, CHIP has wider coverage. It caters to children from numerous economic sections of the societies. This makes its coverage options more broader, too, in comparison to Medicaid.

Is it possible to insure only my child?

This is one of the most common questions that most parents wonder. If you are trying to explore the possibilities of having just your child insured, sadly, that is not possible. No federal or state marketplace for health insurance will sell you a healthcare plan that covers only your child. However, you enroll your child when there is open enrollment or a special enrollment to include children and spouses into the healthcare plans.

How to Apply for CHIP?

To be eligible to enroll your child in the Children’s Health Insurance Program, your family has to fall outside the bracket of Medicaid coverage, which is the poorest in the society. However, at the same time, your family should not be in a position to afford private healthcare. In a situation where the child and the family meet both these criteria, they become eligible to apply for CHIP. It offers complete medical and dental care to uninsured children and teens up to the age of 19. You can get continued and low-cost coverage for many years for your little one without having to shell out a bomb.

However, as the CHIP norms vary from state to state, parents need to study carefully and understand their state’s norms. This will avoid numerous hassles in the future and ensure the child gets quality healthcare at affordable prices.

However, if you are not eligible for any of these state-sponsored health insurance plans for your child, do talk to your health insurance provider. Numerous private health insurance providers offer similar coverage to what the state and federal governments offer. So, make sure you compare numerous plans and pick out the one that suits your child’s needs the best. And that way you can be sure that your child has the best health insurance coverage in case of an emergency.