Cancel Your Existing Covered California Plan If You Reapply

If you currently have an active health plan through Covered California but find yourself submitting a new application to Covered CA for a different plan for one or more of these reasons:

• You didn’t like your original plan or its rate increase, and didn’t know how to switch plans.

• Thought you needed to reapply each year during Open Enrollment

• You couldn’t remember your username or password to access your existing Covered CA account

• You sought help from a health insurance agent and they reapplied for you

Take action to cancel your old plan to avoid potential problems of the old plan auto-renewing and the payment liability for two plans, by following the directions below.

If you have active existing coverage through Covered CA, follow these steps to cancel your original plan:

1. Allow 2-5 business days for Covered CA to process your newly submitted application.
2. Pay your insurance carrier to activate your new plan and get confirmation from them that you are enrolled on your new plan before cancelling your old one.
3. Call Covered CA at 1-800-300-1506 to see if they show you enrolled on more than one plan. Identify your desired plan and tell Covered CA which one to keep and which one to cancel.

Request a cancellation date based on when your new plan starts so that you have no gap in coverage.

Additional Steps to Follow

Double check with your old carrier and/or your bank to make sure any automatic payments you have set up for your old plan have been cancelled. Auto-pay will generally continue through the new year with most insurance companies unless you cancel it.

Note: If your existing coverage was not through Covered CA, please call your insurance carrier to cancel that plan.

Why is it important to cancel your old plan?

• Covered CA’s system may not detect your original enrollment and you could end up with 2 plans if you reapply.

• Your original plan is set to auto-renew. If you do nothing (this means if you don’t call to cancel or make changes) you will be enrolled in the same plan for the new year. It does not automatically cancel at the end of the year.

• Enrollment in 2 plans means you will be responsible to pay 2 premiums.

• All Covered CA plans with a subsidy have a 90 day grace period. So your plan is not automatically cancelled for non-payment, and you may be on the hook for 3 months of premiums if you do not cancel your plan.

• Trying to get your old plan to cancel retroactively to have premiums refunded is a big hassle. This requires a lot of time to sort out with Covered CA and your insurance carriers to correct, and a past due bill could even go into collections.