Individuals with disabilities have historically had difficulty finding affordable health insurance due to their health issues. But Medicare helps by covering three categories of disabled people. Those who…

  • Have received Social Security disability payments for no less than two years
  • Have long term kidney failure
  • Have Lou Gehrig’s disease

How does the twenty-four-month waiting period work?

Usually, Medicare coverage begins on the first day of the 25th month to receive SSDI payments. That 25th month counts as the fourth month of your seven months initial enrollment period.

Exactly how long does Medicare coverage last?

In case you qualify for Medicare through disability, your Medicare benefits continue for as long as you receive SSDI payments and perhaps longer. In case you lose SSDI since your return to work, your Medicare benefits will continue for an additional ninety-three months under some circumstances and up to a certain level of earnings.

If you are still receiving Medicare when you reach sixty-five, the coverage will continue seamlessly, but you will then be entitled to it based upon age and not disability. During this transition, you do not have to do anything. But you do get another seven months initial enrollment period in which you can

  • Get a much better deal on Medigap supplemental insurance, which might have been unaffordable or perhaps denied to you under age sixty-five.
  • Change your Medicare coverage choices if you would like to stop having to pay for any late enrollment penalties that you incurred earlier.

Living with
Lou Gehrig’s disease

In case you’ve disabilities and are red under the railroad retirement system instead compared to Social Security, the rules are a little different with regards to the category of your disability:

  • Total: if you have a total disability, you qualify for Medicare coverage after you have been receiving disability payments for twenty-four months.
  • Occupational: If you have an occupational disability, you do not qualify for early Medicare benefits under age sixty-five.

Suffering from long term kidney failure, Permanent Kidney Failure is a chronic medical condition referred to as end-stage renal disease in Medicare. Your kidneys have stopped working correctly, and you require either regular dialysis to keep them functioning or perhaps a kidney transplant. With this scenario, you face no waiting period for Medicare; however, you must meet specific conditions. You must either

  • Be fully insured.
  • Qualify as a dependent kid or perhaps the spouse of an individual who’s fully insured

Does railroad retirement disability work in the same way?

ALS is often known as Lou Gehrig’s disease after the outstanding New York Yankees baseball star died in 1941. ALS is a wasting disease that attacks the brain and spinal cords nerve cells, eventually shutting down the muscle’s ability to move.

To qualify for Medicare, if you’ve ALs, you must be approved for Social Security or perhaps railroad retirement disability benefits in a typical way.

Health care options in case you cannot get Medicare yet Inevitably

In a system that is patchworked together as American health care, some folks slip through the web.

  • You are under sixty-five and have qualified for disability payments, but you must wait as much as two years for Medicare coverage.
  • Your sixty-five or perhaps older, but you are a legal immigrant who has not lived in the United States for the five years needed to qualify for Medicare. You’ve just a couple of years to go before getting Medicare, but you have lost a job with health benefits, and you are in feeble health.
  • You have had health insurance out of your spouse’s employment, but he or she’s older than you and retiring, losing benefits for both of you.

Landing a job with benefits

A job that will come with health benefits is always the best choice if you or perhaps the spouse of yours can get access to one. By law, employers who provide health insurance must provide the same services, including spouse insurance to employees regardless of age, health status, or perhaps preexisting health conditions.

Paying for temporary
cobra insurance

The cobra law allows most individuals who have left or lost a job to have health coverage through the former employer for up to eighteen months by paying the full premiums, which may be costly If dependent kids and eligible spouses can get this coverage even if the departing employees do not take it themselves.

Purchasing individual insurance through the online Marketplace

Obamacare allows uninsured individuals to buy private health insurance through federal or state-run insurance exchange known collectively as the Marketplace. The massive change that this law brought about is that individuals have been able to purchase individual health insurance regardless of the health status or perhaps preexisting health conditions. Many millions of previously uninsured individuals have finally bought this coverage.

Under the law, folks that do not buy health insurance are liable to owe a tax penalty. Nevertheless, you will not have to pay it if the following is true:

  • You do not have to file tax returns.
  • The least expensive insurance plan will cost over eight % of the earnings of yours.
  • You can demonstrate financial hardship.
  • You are a Native American
  • Your part of a religious group that qualifies for tax exemptions
  • You are in prison

Purchasing Health Insurance outside of the Obamacare Marketplace

Given Obamacare’s future is uncertain. Without knowing what will replace it, it is worth considering the possibilities of buying individual health insurance on the open market.

Obtaining health care with no insurance

In case you cannot buy insurance; you can pay for and do not qualify for assistance; you might still have the ability to get medical treatment from community clinics that will provide care for individuals that are uninsured for a fee at a cost that is low or even according to your ability to pay.