<p>With all our bickering I think we missed this question.</p>
<p>They definitely can buy insurance on the exchange. Anyone can.</p>
<p>Subsidies is a different matter. One of the criteria to qualify for subsidies is for an INDIVIDUAL health plan from work to be more than 9.5% of household income. It does not matter what family coverage costs. </p>
<p>So to determine whether the baby’s coverage can be subsidized, the parents need to figure out what they have available at work for individual coverage.</p>
<p>I’ve been waiting to buy via healthcare.gov as a favor to Obama – I wanted to help the December web site numbers to come out better. But I’m about ready to just call BCBS and git er done that way. I don’t want to pay one penny for one unnecessary day of my crappy, expensive catastrophic plan. I’ll be back on a good plan Jan. 1 whether I can do it online or not.</p>
<p>Apprentice, although if you search high and low it may be possible to find some of this data, I doubt it would be very easy. This is exactly the type of reform we need. The govt should set up a system so all the info is collected and easily disseminated to consumers.</p>
<p>Currently, I depend on people whom I trust and physicians who are very knowledgeable about the best medical providers in my region for various conditions.</p>
<p>Hanna, just call them up and “git er done”, as you said. You need insurance a lot more than the man in charge needs a favor from you. Don’t take a chance. Time is running out. The numbers are going to be low whether you add one person to it or not.</p>
<p>GP, the data is there. Did you try? You can google “hospital outcomes comparison 2012” as a start. You’ll find lots of Medicare/Medicaid results (so, use -medicare to avoid them) and some articles discussing the need for making results “risk adjusted.” Ie, accounting for the already medically compromised individuals who go through certain procedures. </p>
<p>But what you will like, GP, is an article in there that says these studies are just as good as culling through Yelp. </p>
<p>OTOH, if you look at that link I gave and follow it through, I doubt your friends can tell you about respiratory failure after surgery or, ya know, CLABSI. Sometimes, I wonder if you are kidding.</p>
<p>sryrstress, these people are screwed. Because the husband receives coverage from his employer and his contribution is less than 9.5% of his salary, the wife and baby are not eligible for any subsidies even though the premium for the entire family far exceeds the 9.5% threshold. I am not sure if the wife and baby are allowed to stay on the parent’s plan if the husband’s employer offers family coverage. Hopefully, someone else can answer this part of the question.</p>
<p>Hanna, have you tried since Sunday? I had months of issues but when I tried on Sunday, it went smooth as silk. Also, have you tried calling the hotline? (BCBS was more useless to me than the website was prior to Sunday- and that’s saying something!)</p>
<p>Everything on the site is working for me, but I uploaded my driver’s license AND successfully called Experian to verify via credit data over a month ago. (In theory, you should only have to do one of those.) The site still shows verification pending as of this morning, and the help chat person couldn’t change that. So even though the site is working, I’m not verified and I can’t purchase that way until I am. I’m done with it.</p>
<p>I did that too with my first account. Both my fiance and I got stuck there. (I documented that debacle earlier in this thread or the first one, can’t remember)</p>
<p>We ended up making new accounts. It worked perfectly. </p>
<p>Make a new one. Your identity is never getting through on that first account.</p>
<p>I might have misread, but I read “mom”, “dad”, and “baby”. Are the parents married or living together? (There was a question about unmarried partners living together on the exchange app). Asking for clarification as it can make a big difference.</p>
<p>Hanna, I’ve heard (from several people that did it) that deleting the account and starting over works. But I can easily understand why you’d go right to a provider. Either way, I hope you get your insurance with no more hassle.</p>