We recently suggested group health insurance coverage for an applicant who was waiting on her status on a private insurance application from underwriting. Her status was not yet available and she needed to get coverage in place quickly. In January of 2009, Kaiser received a high volume of applications and the process has been taking longer than anticipated.  We anticipate processing times on individual and family applications to improve in the near future, but in the meantime group coverage may be the best option for some. There are a couple advantages to small business medical insurance.   

1. You can get coverage in place more quickly

Recently, underwriting has been taking six to eight weeks to process private health insurance applications. Group medical applications are processed more quickly. Small businesses and self-employed individuals can often get coverage in place in a week or less. 

2. Pre-existing Conditions are OK

The small group medical insurance forms do not include any medical questions. Preexisting health conditions that would be cause for automatic denial on a private health insurance application are not a problem when applying for a small business plan. To qualify for group medical benefits, you simply need two people on the plan. Husband-wife businesses are OK if spouses file taxes jointly. We have even qualified one person groups in some cases. In one instance, one spouse was on medicare and the other was too young. Since medicare is counted as group coverage, we were able to qualify them. The younger spouse we put on the Kaiser group plan and the older spouse signed the declination of coverage saying that he had group insurance through medicare.