The new Kaiser Permanente paper application for Individuals and Families in California begins with a section about the “Financially Responsible Party”. This is simply the person who will take care of the bill. Any person can be the financial responsible party. This could be a mother paying for her 30 year old son, or an employer covering an employee on a private plan. Part of this section asks for the address of the “Covered Party”, meaning the person who will be actually receiving the health insurance coverage. The rest of this section is for the financially responsible party.

You may notice this is the only section where phone number and email address are entered. Thus, if the financially responsible party is not also the covered party, Kaiser Permanente will not get this contact information for the covered party. This may have been an oversight on the part of those who created the application. Perhaps, in future revisions to the enrollment forms, Kaiser will correct this.