After You Apply For KCHIP Lexington Kentucky Child Health Insurance
There are several offices in Lexington for health insurance by KCHIP, and once you have dropped off your application to insure your child with KCHIP, then there will be a process that will be followed. These offices tend to be busy, so if you want to see a case worker that same day, you should either go early and plan on waiting, or just drop off your application and expect a call from your case worker. Once you get called in or called back by the case worker, they will ask you a number of questions in order to determine whether or not your child is eligible for KCHIP and, if so, then for what kind.
While you are in the office with the case worker, you will also be able to ask questions and request that he or she provide you with information about the program. It is now that is the best time to find out as much as you can about the child health care plan that your kid will be provided with, because while there are many health insurance companies that have open call lines for you to ring up and ask questions about your plan, it’s not so easy when you are getting your insurance from the government, so you should take advantage for this opportunity for clarification.
If the application or the interview do not satisfy, that doesn’t mean that your child will not be able to qualify for KCHIP. The case worker who gives you the interview is going to request that you bring back extra information so that they can determine your case. This can be frustrating, but just bear with it. If you don’t have the extra information back within ten days, then your kid won’t be able to get KCHIP, so make sure you turn it in on time.
Cheers,
Fashun Guadarrama.
Premium payments for KCHIP Lexington health insurance
If you are unable to pay your premium for KCHIP, then you will have to go to the nearest Lexington health insurance office and try again, which will start the process all over, with another application, interview, and everything. You can still get approved after defaulting on a premium, but since it is such a hassle and having health insurance coverage is so important, it should be avoided at all costs. To make sure you pay on time, remember that premiums are do on the 5th every month.
Even if you do take a while to make a premium payment, but still pay it on or before the due date for the first payment, your child will still be covered during that time although you may have to be reimbursed and make the payment for their treatment initially. If your child gets approved, then his or her coverage begins that same day that you applied at the office, even if you weren’t approved yet. So if you had to take your kid to the doctor or hospital while waiting for approval, that is covered, too.
If you are sending the payment through mail, then you need to take precaution to send it at least a week ahead of time, so that the office has plenty of time to receive and process the payment before the due date. If you mail it on the due date, then your child will likely lose his or her coverage. The amount isn’t too much–every family pays twenty dollars a month, whether they have two kids or eight. If you don’t pay your premium, then you will have to pay twenty dollars more in order to apply again for coverage for your child.
Cheers,
Fashun Guadarrama.
Income eligibility for KCHIP Lexington health insurance
Medicaid is one of the easier types of federal assistance to get, but it still disqualifies many families who are unable to provide health insurance for their children. The number of families without child health insurance in Lexington, Kentucky is particularly high, and that is why the state program, KCHIP, exists to help families who fall through the Medicaid gap receive assistance for their children. The decision of who is and isn’t eligible for KCHIP depends on the age of the children involved and how much their parents make. You don’t have to be below the poverty level to qualify your kids for KCHIP–the cap is 200% of the poverty level.
An example of a family who is 200% of the federal poverty level is a family with two adults and two kids that brings home slightly over forty thousand every year. There are different requirements for the number of people in every family. If you have a family of five people, the cap is $48,260. For six, it is $55, 220. For seven, it is $62,180. If you have more children than that, contact your KCHIP office that is local to find out what the maximum income for your family size is. The income, you should be aware, is based on how much you make every year before taxes are taken out, not what you actually bring home.
The income limits for KCHIP don’t always remain the same, as they have to be adjusted for inflation and changes in wages. If you are unsure of your income, make sure that each April you check and see what the new limits are so that you don’t waste time applying only to find out that your are ineligible.
Cheers,
Fashun Guadarrama.
What Else Do I Need to Know About the Kentucky Child Health Insurance Plan?
Many children are provided with health insurance by their parents or through their parents’ employer, but many times that health insurance is less than perfect. Child health insurance often does not cover the types of things that children need most, and if you have only partial insurance coverage, you may want to get assistance from the state of Kentucky to help you supplement that coverage so that your child does not go without. Unfortunately, you can’t get KCHIP if your kid is already insured, no matter how sparely. What you can do is apply for Medicaid.
If you choose to cancel your insurance policy and get KCHIP, then your child may have to wait six months before they can receive child health insurance coverage through this state insurance plan. This will never be the case for families who make little enough to qualify for KCHIP and not be required to pay a premium. However, if you are trying to insure a previously covered infant and your income is at least 186% of the federal poverty level, then you will have to wait six months. The same applies to any child up to the age of eighteen whose family makes at least 156% of the federal poverty level. If you lost your insurance in circumstances that you could not take charge of, you can get this waiting period waived.
There are children who may have been previously insured but who do not need to wait, nor pay a premium, in order to receive KCHIP. They are able to be insured as soon as they are approved, regardless of how they came to be uninsured. These children include those between the ages of one and five whose parents make at least 134% of the federal poverty level, and at least 150%; and kids between six and eighteen whose parents make at least 101% and at most 150%.
Cheers,
Fashun Guadarrama.
Yearly renewal of Kentucky Child Health Insurance Plan
Once you have KCHIP, you can’t just take it for granted and plan to do nothing else from then on. Sure, there the monthly premium payments for some families, but the plan requires a bit more upkeep than that. In order to make sure that you are still eligible, Kentucky requires you to apply over again each year to determine if you can qualify for state provided child health insurance. This application process is a lot easier than the one that you had to go through in the first place, but it still requires quite a bit from you.
The month that falls before the last month of a twelve month period, the KCHIP office will send you a renewal form in the mail. You will have to fill out this renewal form with your family and your child’s current information, not the information used to apply in the first place. You will have to state and prove current income and any type of current insurance that is not KCHIP, even if it is not for the child.
You can’t just mail the renewal form in, though, sadly. You have to go up to a local DCBS office on or before the first day of the twelveth month of coverage. You will also be required to bring certain documents that you had to bring before, such as paycheck stubs for two months, in order to prove that the family is still at an income level where they need child health insurance coverage through KCHIP. If you don’t make it in by the first, that is not your last chance. A final notice will be mailed to you that will provide you with instructions of how you are still able to renew your child’s coverage. If you lose or ignore this final notice, your child will lose his or her coverage at the end of the twelveth month.
Cheers,
Fashun Guadarrama.