New Mexico’s Health Insurance Safety Net

With so many changes to health insurance and the laws behind regulating who gets what, it is important to continue our coverage of these changes to keep you well-informed.  

Among these changes are some alterations to the pre-existing health insurance safety net. 

The first thing we will be covering in this blog post what a health insurance safety net actually is and the purpose it serves.

The Safety Net

The health insurance safety net was created to help insure the small group of people who were ineligible for health insurance. The reasons for this can vary from an employer not providing it to lack of funding to afford it on their own.

Sometimes, it can even be the insurance company’s refusal to take them on as a client because of a pricey preexisting condition. 

These ‘high risk’ individuals as they are called could essentially lose money for the insurance company and though it may not be fair that is how it has worked for quite awhile. Luckily, the safety net has been able to help some of the people in the high risk pool.

Typically, each state has one of these safety nets in place. Here, in New Mexico, that safety net comes in the form of The Alliance. 

They are a unique, non-profit organization here in New Mexico whose sole purpose is to help people and small businesses that do not normally qualify for health insurance get insured. They offer a choice of insurance types -- from HMOs to PPOs -- among other great features including:

•  Your choice in medical plans. They don’t throw you in what is cheapest. Instead, they give you options and that allows you to pick what best fits you and your lifestyle.
• No health screening. This means that you don’t need to be worried about being rejected from a company because of a pre-existing condition. This is a good thing being that some companies have the gall to call pregnancy a pre-existing condition.
• A very good benefits plan that will cover all of your bases. This means you get a physician, reoccurring visits to the doctor’s office, and even access to prescription drugs if you are sick.
• You aren’t stuck with one plan. You have to option to change annually.
• Probably one of the best features for small business employers is groups as small as 1 or 2 employees have been covered, and these only require 50% of eligible employees to be on the plan.

Getting health care can be tough in today’s day and age, but with The Alliance here to help you may not be as far away from a good health plan than you first thought.