5 Top States for High-Income Earners Without Health Coverage

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has launched a $50 million advertising campaign to promote a new COVID-19 enrollment period extension over at HealthCare.gov.

In recent years, the regular HealthCare.gov open enrollment period ran from Nov. 1 through Dec. 15. This year, the administration of President Joe Biden started by adding a three-month special enrollment period for all, and now it has extended the special enrollment period to Aug. 15.

For financial professionals, the HHS health insurance campaign could create a temporary marketing boost for all kinds of protection products, ranging from life insurance, to disability insurance, to longevity insurance.

The campaign could be especially helpful to products like life insurance because, for the first time, HealthCare.gov can offer big, temporary premium subsidies for exchange plan users with household income over 400% of the federal poverty level.

The subsidies could cut what many of those people pay out of pocket for exchange plan coverage by 40% or more, according to an analysis by managers of DC Health Link, the ACA public exchange for the District of Columbia.

HHS estimates that about 3.6 million high-income U.S. residents lack major medical insurance.

High-income people who lack health insurance may be more likely than other high-income people to have gaping holes in their insurance and retirement planning arrangements. That could make them great prospects for life, disability and retirement products.

High-income uninsured people with children in their households could be even better prospects: They have an obvious, urgent need for life insurance, to protect those children against financial ruin.

HHS estimates that about 1.1 million of the high-income people without major medical insurance have children in their households.

The number of high-income uninsured people with children in their households ranges from just 300, in Vermont, up to more than 200,000, in one state, with a median of about 14,000.

For a look at the five states with the most high-income uninsured people, ranked in terms of the number of those high-income uninsured people who have children, see the slideshow above.

(Photo: Shutterstock)