Have spoken on three occasions with a representative to ascertain that my son is in fact signed up for Health Insurance: According to their Member handbook:OptumHealthAllies, it says that they are only a Health Discount Program, but when my son and I talk to their representative they confirm he is on Health Insurance , Unified National Health/ Multiplan (very small letter: limited. But something does not seem right. Please help us with this? question. We really need to know if this is a reputable Major Health Insurance. My son lives on a very tight budget.
Is Unified National Health/Multiplan a legitimate major Health Insurance provider?
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This is what is referred to as a limited benefit health plan. It probably does technically have some insurance components to it that are what are called "indemnity plans" which pay a fixed amount for a day in the hospital or for a visit to the doctor or towards other health services.
These plans do not meet the legal requirements under ObamaCare to be defined as major medical insurance and to avoid the individual mandate tax penalty. In fact, they didn't meet the legal criteria to be called major medical plans before ObamaCare went into effect. Such plans were often marketed to businesses with lots of low income employees as a "better than nothing" alternative to more expensive group major medical plans. Sometimes they are also marketed to vulnerable individuals who don't understand health insurance and that sounds like the case here.
If your son is on a very tight budget then he will either qualify for very substantial premium subsidies in the government health insurance marketplace or for Medicaid. In either case he would have better, more affordable coverage through these options than what this outfit is selling. Also, please do my profession a favor and if an insurance agent has tried to sell you this coverage and told you it was major medical coverage please report him or her to your state's insurance department for investigation.
Multiplan is a national network of doctors that Unified rents so they have a network that can be used. They are a separate company from Unified and are just in the business of renting their network of doctors out to insurance companies that do not have their own network or have a regional or limited network they want to supplement.