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Can I Add Someone to My Health Insurance After Open Enrollment?

When you buy a health insurance plan for yourself, you can get coverage that extends to your dependents; equally, if you’re an employer covering your workers, you can offer coverage for any dependents they have. If you’re planning on buying a family health insurance plan to cover your dependents, it’s significant to ensure you know they’re qualified to join your family health insurance plan before you make your final purchase.

Dependents for Taxes and Health Insurance

According to healthcare.gov, if you can count somebody as a dependent on your taxes, they are also reliant on your health insurance plan. What’s more, you need to provide health insurance for anybody you claim as a tax dependent. So if you want to include a kid or other relative as a tax dependent, you should also ensure they’re involved in your health insurance plan.

Your Kids Are Your Dependents

If you have kids, they’re perhaps the first people that come to mind when talking about dependents. In general, you can include any child who fits the following criteria:

• Age– Your kid has to be under the age of 26.
• Relationship to You– For a kid to qualify as your dependent, they require to be your biological child, your stepchild, your adopted child, or a foster child, you are taking care of. In case they have any sisters, half-sisters, brothers, half-brothers, or children of their own, you can also include them on your health insurance plan.
• Length of Residency– A child only eligible as your dependent if they have lived with you for at least six months.
• Income Contribution– Although somebody can be your dependent while working and contributing to their costs, they cannot be their primary sources of support. This means a child’s income must be lower than half of the cost of their support expenses for them to be eligible as your dependent.
• Tax Filing– A kid can’t be your dependent if they file a joint tax return that year.
• Other Claims– A child cannot be claimed as a dependent by more than one family. Thus irrespective of your relationship to the child, if someone else claims them as a dependent, you cannot.

Besides keeping tracking what’s needed to claim your child as a dependent, you should also remember what isn’t. Your child does not have to be living with you when you enroll them in your health insurance plan, as long as they’ve lived with you long enough to meet the residency obligation. It also does not matter whether they’re married, or whether they have a job and are qualified to enroll in that employer’s health insurance plan. As long as they meet these other requirements, you can generally still include them in your coverage.

Adding Your Spouse as a Dependent

In most situations, adding a spouse to your health insurance plan is acceptable. After getting married, you typically have up to 60 days to enroll in a new plan, or add your spouse as a dependent.

Bear in mind that if you or your spouse have access to employer-sponsored health insurance, but opt to purchase your own family plan on a health insurance exchange, you likely will not qualify for Obamacare subsidies.

Additional Dependents

In addition to your child and spouse, you can include other relatives as dependents under certain conditions, that is:

• If no other person has named them as a dependent
• If their gross annual income is lower than $3,000
• If you are responsible for providing more than half of the financial support, they depend on

Besides your relatives, you can include others who have lived in your house for at least a year, provided they meet all of the criteria mentioned above.

Coverage Considerations

After you have named someone your dependent, they will usually have access to the same plan or set of plans you use. Depending on where you get your health insurance, they may choose among plans that you depend on. If you claim somebody as a dependent, they will be able to enroll in either the health insurance plan or the dental plan or enroll in both, according to the Small Business Administration.

Health Insurance Plans is committed to assisting you in understanding all the nuances of health coverage. For additional information, visit healthinsplans.org, where you can tap into our health insurance information or start looking at family health insurance plans.

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Resources and References:

• Employer-Sponsored Health Insurance