Affordable insurance for full timer in S.D.

PawPaw_n_Gram wrote:
Unfortunately the plans offered in each state are based on what the insurance companies see as the needs of the people in that state.

SD is limited in their traveling population.

Texas and Florida have larger populations which means more insurance companies want to be part of their plans.

Texas at least also includes a large number of transit workers. Not those in Texas to work, but people from Texas which travel around the country to work. Including a lot of people who do not RV. That gives the insurance companies incentive to offer national plans to capture that market.

My guess, only a guess, is there aren't enough people with SD residency who travel to justify an insurance company offering that option.

You can be sure if there was enough of a market, insurance companies would offer the coverage.

I agree. I could get coverage for my state, but I'm opting for the national coverage for about 3-4 times the cost. I just want to make sure that if something happens that we are covered and nothing will come back and bite us in the rear. But this is through the county government, as we are teachers.

For what it is worth we had no problem getting private health insurance in SD as full timers before we went on Medicare. The company we used was Assurant.
BC/BS on the other hand would not continue our policy in either NH or SD unless we had a real address and spent more than six months continuously in the state each year.
That was about 7 years ago.

Clay L wrote:
For what it is worth we had no problem getting private health insurance in SD as full timers before we went on Medicare. The company we used was Assurant.
BC/BS on the other hand would not continue our policy in either NH or SD unless we had a real address and spent more than six months continuously in the state each year.
That was about 7 years ago.

But, EVERYTHING has changed with Obama care. Need to recheck, and check carefully.

Just a note on one special consideration for residency when you are not actively "In-state".

The Supreme Court of the United States has ruled that you have the right to maintain "legal residency" in your town, county, and state forever once it has been established as long as you do not declared residency elsewhere.

You do NOT need to maintain a home or rental or real mailing address once residency has been established. You may not be refused anything that requires residency by the government or by a private company. Once residency has been established all that other "at least 6 months per year stuff" has no legal standing.

In other words, once you have had a real physical presence in a town, met and established real physical residency you may retail your legal residency in that town forever.

My understanding is that this is completely settled law. As always, that does not stop someone from trying to refuse your right of residency. It just gives you the legal standing to demand your rights.

Is the problem with health insurance ins SD just with ACA?
Is anyone having a problem getting Medicare Medigap or Medicare Part D in SD as fulltimers?

I sent you a PM.

Bohemian wrote:
Just a note on one special consideration for residency when you are not actively "In-state".

The Supreme Court of the United States has ruled that you have the right to maintain "legal residency" in your town, county, and state forever once it has been established as long as you do not declared residency elsewhere.

You do NOT need to maintain a home or rental or real mailing address once residency has been established. You may not be refused anything that requires residency by the government or by a private company. Once residency has been established all that other "at least 6 months per year stuff" has no legal standing.

In other words, once you have had a real physical presence in a town, met and established real physical residency you may retail your legal residency in that town forever.

My understanding is that this is completely settled law. As always, that does not stop someone from trying to refuse your right of residency. It just gives you the legal standing to demand your rights.

Tell that to Sanford and Dakota Care.

Bohemian wrote:
The Supreme Court of the United States has ruled that you have the right to maintain "legal residency" in your town, county, and state forever once it has been established as long as you do not declared residency elsewhere.

You do NOT need to maintain a home or rental or real mailing address once residency has been established. You may not be refused anything that requires residency by the government or by a private company. Once residency has been established all that other "at least 6 months per year stuff" has no legal standing.

Could you please provide the explicit statute that addresses this?

Just read this on RVerHealthInsurance.com

If you are a full time RVer domiciled in South Dakota and you qualify for a subsidy under The Affordable Care Act then you have probably been struggling to find a viable health insurance plan on the exchange in 2014. The three companies (Sanford, DakotaCare, Avera) on the healthcare exchange in SD have all said they are not a good fit for RVers–two of them (Sanford and DakotaCare) going so far as to say they will not allow RVers to sign up. One of them (Sanford) has actually dropped some RVers whom have enrolled in 2014 after discovering they did not have a physical address in SD. The third one, Avera Health, although it offers PPO plans has appeared to not actually have a network of providers outside of the SD region.
I spoke with Avera in January 2014 and confirmed what we suspected about Avera not allowing RVers to access a nationwide network outside of the SD region as well as not covering claims if members are traveling more then 3 months outside of SD. That had caused us to not recommend Avera for RVers in South Dakota in our State-by-State guide.

However, On February 17, 2014 I received a phone call from an Agency Manager with Avera in response to my inquiry about insuring RVers. She called me back to tell me that their policy has changed. Here are the two policy changes at Avera in regards to insuring RVers:
You can enroll in an Avera Health Plan with only a mail-forwarding address if SD is your legal domicile. You will not be asked to provide any further proof of physical residency.
You can utilize a PPO national network of providers while traveling outside of the SD region even in cases of non-emergency care.
The network that Avera PPO members will utilize outside of SD is called the PHCS MultiPlan network and is pretty big with over 900,000 healthcare providers. You can examine the network yourself by clicking
here.
I pressed Avera to give me further confirmation of this change because sometimes when you call and talk to a sales representative you might be told that the PHCS MultiPlan network is for emergency care only. When I told the Manager this was happening her response was:
Sales reps are quoting rules for group plans and pre ACA individual. Everything I told you earlier is correct. Members can access PHCS for routine care.
This is great news for SD RVers whom qualify for a significant subsidy. If you have been considering changing your residency from SD to another state because of lack of carriers on the exchange that are RVer-friendly you might now reconsider staying in SD.

Avera still holds the position that they are not an ideal choice for RVers whom travel outside of the SD region extensively. Nevertheless, there is nothing in the Avera Health Plan Certificate of Coverage that prevents a full-time RVer domiciled in SD from enrolling in their plans and utilizing the MultiPlan network.

In answer to was_butnotnow. We have been domiciled in SD since 2010. We are now both on Medicare. We have our Medicare supplement through Gerber Life and our Medicare Part D through the Humana WalMart plan. Have not had issues. YET!

As far as I can determine, the changes in insurance have only affected those under 65 who now go under the ACA.