You may be able to get a Covid ‘stimulus check’ from your health insurer after spending significantly dipped in the sector last year.
As a result of the pandemic, companies fell short of the required threshold – meaning a payment to customers could be due soon.
Under the rules set out for insurance companies, insurers must spend at least 80% of premium revenues care claims or quality improvement activities.
However, as the pandemic gripped the nation, spending dipped during the period as consumers opted to forgo routine surgery in a bid to avoid any potential exposure to the virus.
According to Yahoo Finance, this now means that private insurance companies are expected to hand out $2.1 billion in rebates to more than 10.7 million policyholders.
This would be the second highest amount ever issued under the Affordable Care Act (ACA) and would see the average customer rake in roughly $299 by the autumn.
It also follows a number of rounds of stimulus checks and plus up payments that have been made to Americans in a bid to boost the economy and consumer habits.
Plus up payments are the missing stimulus amounts from the previous two checks.
Yet, not every policyholder who bought health insurance on the individual market can claim the same amount.
This is because the majority of the money available is expected to go to about 5 million individual market policyholders –meaning small and large group insurance markets ate anticipated to receive to receive $308 million and $310 million in rebates, respectively.
According to analysis by the Kaiser group, this could work at either $299, $127 or $95 per member as the sum will vary from market to market.
In a similar fashion to other stimulus checks – such as ‘plus up payments’- these payments can be received via check or in the form of premium credit.
However, the significant one time windfall will only come through later this year, meaning any claimant will have to wait for the payment to be both processed.
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