Farm Fact Friday: Health Options for Self Employed Farmers

Hello everyone welcome back to another Farm Fact Friday certainly a beautiful day today but it has been quite wet recently. So not a lot of action happening right now in terms of harvest. So we’re going to take a little bit of time today just to talk about some health options for self-employed farmers. Now if your farming situation allows you to have health insurance through a spouse that may work outside of the house great but if you are you know an entity that everybody’s working on the farm and that is your business there’s good news. You do have options for health care and you may not have realized it so what why this is so relevant and why I’m talking about it today is that there is one time during the year called open enrollment where you can go in and make changes or if you don’t currently have a plan you can select a plan to make it effective on January 1st.

So the timing is perfect our first open enrollment piece opens next Friday October 15th, so I thought it would be a great time to kind of reach out and let people know that there is an option for health care and if nothing else just to kind of understand it what your options are and then make a informed decision. So the first segment which starts on October 15th is for the Medicare group so this is people who are 65 or older who now qualify for Medicare there are so many options out there you’re probably getting tons and tons of mail that can be so overwhelming so if you want to review this what your options are we look at your medications specifically to find the plan that’s best for you. You take it, you ask us questions and make an informed decision if that’s not your segment. We also have uh individual plans that are available through the marketplace or the affordable care act and these are ones that you can add your spouse or children to. So that’s an option if you um meet requirements and then the final one is the fact that as a farmer who is potentially self-employed you could um create your own group plan. So if you are you know husband wife and now you have um older children but they also need coverage that would be an option for you. So we can also look at group plans for the farm as well if it um if it fits the needs there so typically you know we like to get out in the farm show you things that are going on but from time to time it’s nice to just check in and talk about those back end things that maybe not the highest priority but for us right now it’s a timely topic uh that to go you know through open enrollment for Medicare starting on October 15th and then that individual piece we can start talking about that on November 1st group plans we can talk about when it fits your schedule.

So you know the important thing is just making sure that you’re comfortable with what you have in place and um you know if there’s ways that you can save money here or there that’s important as well. So with that by golly I hope you have a great rest of your Friday a wonderful weekend we’ll check you back next week for another Farm Fact Friday take care.