Special Enrollment Periods with Crystal Budd, HealthPlans4Less.com

Crystal Budd:  I’m here to talk to you a little bit about. I’m going to touch on the health care reform you know that open enrollment is now closed for Hover, California and the Affordable Care Act. However there’s lots of things that are triggers for what they call special enrollment periods. For example, if you get married or if you have a child, you go through a divorce, if there’s a death, if you lose your job, if you move out of the area. There’s many reasons that could come that could actually allow a person to qualify for what they call special enrollment period meaning that you could actually enroll into a new plan at that time.

So, if you know somebody who is thinking I don’t have insurance and I didn’t — I didn’t do anything yet. It may be that there — there may be a special enrollment period that would apply to them possibly and if not, I’m also — we also offer a different type of health insurance. You still have to qualify, they ask minimal health questions but you can purchase health insurance temporary they call it and it’s — you would still be set to the penalty through the Obamacare or Affordable Care Act but it’s not considered what they call compliant. It doesn’t cover all of the things that the new plans are covering. They have different limitations, different deductibles, and more like what we are used to versus the new coverage so our doors are still open for business even though the open enrollment has changed or it’s closed.

And keep in mind if you want to make a change and you’re in one of the plans today and you don’t have one of these life changing events you really cannot change until open enrollment starts again October 15th through December 7th and then the new coverage would start January 1 so it’s kind of like we don’t have the freedoms that we used to have to be able to switch or cancel whenever we want.

Of course, you can cancel whenever you want but then you just can’t get anything else or you can go to the temporary policy and be subject to that penalty. The penalty is basically states if you do not have insurance for eight months out of the year you will pay a penalty and that penalty for each year is one percent of your gross income or $95 a person depending upon which is higher. Chuck, what did I say? One percent, yeah, one percent. So if and for some people I have clients that are paying the penalty. They say I don’t care I’m going to pay the penalty and that’s again your freedom of choice. You can do that but it will be imposed on you April 15th when you go to to pay your taxes you will be seeing that line item on your tax return and you will be paying either based on your refund that you thought you were getting or it will be just tacked on to what you owe. You will not escape it, okay so that just and I’m not going to labor that.

I am a covered California qualified certified agent as well. Somebody said oh, I didn’t know you did covered California. Yes, of course I do. It’s part of what we do. So and also again I do Medicare. Good lead for me is if somebody is aging into Medicare. It’s interesting Medicare also has an open enrollment period. Same period of time which I think is absolutely crazy. Everything is going to overlap all in one and that would be again October 15 through December 7 and those plans start on January 1 so anybody that you know that is aging into Medicare or is not satisfied with what they already have with Medicare. They are saying I can’t go to my doctor, I can’t get the service I want then they should call me and we will explore what their options are if they want to make a change so because there’s lots of options in Medicare.

Now let’s get to the — what I really want to talk about today and that is the life insurance. Life insurance is basically it’s how — I love those quote in here. If you open up your little book here at the bottom of page five it says life insurance is the most amazing product in the world. It creates wealth by the stroke of a pen where there once was none. That’s really true. Where can you spend $50 a month and get a $500 thousand return on that tax free? So if you are thinking I don’t have any life insurance or life insurance is too expensive or I don’t need life insurance. You really do need life insurance. It’s-it protects your family and especially if you pull out this paper I gave you. I realize this is in black and white. Take a look at this with me. This says that you may be at higher risk for a serious illness than you think and these are just statistics and it says 91% of elderly citizens have at least one chronic condition. 73% have at least two. Okay.

What is a chronic condition? It is something that never goes away. You know it can be lots of illnesses but you know it’s-it’s a daily care that is required. That’s a chronic condition, okay? And then if you look below that it says 34 seconds, every 34 seconds an American suffers a coronary event. So that’s something heart related. Every 40 seconds an American will stroke. Every 68 seconds someone develops Alzheimer’s and it says 75% of heart attack victims survive at least three years. Well if you have a heart attack and now you are not well and you have to go to your rehabilitation and especially for people like you that are self-employed where nobody else is going to take care your — excuse me pay your bills, pay your employees, pay your mortgage. What’s going to happen if you have a heart attack and you can’t work? Is that going to affect your business? I think it will affect your business and your ability to survive.

And so we strongly and I mean strongly recommend that if you haven’t had your life insurance reviewed you should have it reviewed. If you have an old term policy that’s just you know that’s term life insurance those are really what I call a dinosaur in the industry. You really need to have it looked at, reviewed because there’s products that we offer for pennies on the dollar. Literally that offer what they call living benefits and what is a living benefit? A living benefit is something where if you had a stroke or a heart attack or Alzheimer’s or Lou Gehrig’s or paralysis or blindness, cancer. All of these types of illnesses you can actually access the funds in the life insurance policy called living benefits.

Living benefits to me is what consumer friendly and it’s really where the rubber meets the road in life insurance because they say statistically, if you have a term policy they will only pay out about three percent of those claims and maybe only one percent is the new statistic I’ve heard. That means every dollar you spend in life insurance you’re not going to get that money back unless your part of that three percent, right? Because you’re going to outlive and it will cancel because it’s a term insurance, meaning term means if you buy a policy for 10 years, it’s only good for ten years or 20 or 30 and so on. So but this policy stays 66 percent of people will use it because it has living benefits. Living benefits that are things that if I have a heart attack I now can access the money to my life insurance policy and may I get a $500 thousand payout depending upon how much insurance you purchase.

So do you think that’s a better deal for paying maybe a couple pennies more for the insurance? Sounds like a really good deal, doesn’t it? Because if you have the opportunity — all of you are going to die someday, you know and that’s the hard reality we are all going to die and do we want to make sure that our families are taken care of? Is that important to you? And it should be especially if you’re a man. There’s no excuse. I’m a woman standing up here and we have lots and lots of life insurance so I know if something went wrong my family is going to be provided for because he’s being responsible.

There are a lot of men out there that are not responsible. They are irresponsible and they are not going to — they are saying I’m not going to buy that for my family and it’s foolish and you need to make sure your family is protected. You need to-to and you don’t have to buy a lot but you should have some. You should make sure you have your family protected so very important. You look at this little diagram. I gave you these because I want you to sit down sometime and go through an inventory and this just — it’s not a lengthy one, it’s just something you kind of put together pretty quickly but you know are you going to be out of the pie of 100 which one are you going to be here? It says 56 people will have incomes between 10 and 50 thousand. Do you want to live on that? Is that what you want to live on? Because that’s the majority.

Okay 16 of us are going to be dead. That’s-that’s if your 65. 15 of us are going to make over 50 thousand a year, that’s-that’s where I want to be is over 50 for sure. And then 13 people are going to have their $10 thousand a year from their bond. That’s poverty level. I don’t want to be one of those people. What can I say to you is even if you haven’t planned well for retirement and you want to be responsible you can actually plan well for your spouse by having life insurance. You can actually help them and give them a better life if something happens to you so think about that, think about your children.

And if you go to the very back page, you are going to see where there’s a needs analysis here. Final expenses are — what is it going to cost to bury me should I die? And they say about $15 thousand is what the going rate is now so we need to take that into consideration. What do you have as far as debt service? Any — a credit card loan, any other debt service you would consider loans that would need to be paid. They recommend an emergency fund for three to six months of cash monies in case something does happen to you. When you have a heart attack or you are told you have cancer it throws your world in a tailspin and what a great thing.

When I have a client call me and said I have just been diagnosed with cancer and I say I’m sorry but you know what? The good news is you are going to have access to money, you don’t have to worry about paying your bills, your mortgage, putting food on the table. And you know what I always hear — you know what you hear at the other end of the line? Thank God. Thank God. They can breathe. Because you are always worried how am I going to get care? How am I going to pay for the care? How am I going to live? What is this going to do my-my finances? Is this going to destroy me financially?

And for a lot of people you know 75 percent of bankruptcy of people that have health insurance they file bankruptcy because of health related issues. 75 percent, they have health insurance but they can’t pay their bill. It’s shocking to me and so this is the solution and it’s really affordable. As you age of course it gets more expensive but is it worth it? It can actually create wealth in your family to the point where you know your family could survive. And remember people are living longer. What is the age of life expectancy today? Around 82 years old. They used to only say we were going to live to 68, so they didn’t worry as much. We only had two or three years after retirement. Now it’s 82. So, and for Don it’s going to be 95 probably because you have longevity in your family?

So I hope you planned well, Don. Okay so look at these, education, that’s really important if you are going to help your grandkids or your kids and I think they are dinging me but I was told I had a few extra minutes or no? Oh you found a Presenter? Okay, great. So is my time up? It is up. So with all that being said, I could have said even more but please do one of these planners and call me, and you are not obligated to purchase anything from me but I would be more than happy to review what you have, see if what you have is adequate and consider strongly getting into one of these new policies because they are really going to help your families. Okay. So thank you for the time, I appreciate it, and I’m here to serve you. Bye.

Crystal Budd
HealthPlans4Less.com
714-962-5551
714-478-1131 cell
714-963-0052 fax
cbuddfv@aol.com
CA License #0E59299