Hello Homebase people, and welcome to Stride Health!
If you have been referred to Stride, it likely means you are:
- An employer looking for options for your employees
- An independent 1099 contractor, or a part-time W2 employee looking for health insurance
- Someone who is losing employer coverage and has to choose between a marketplace plan or COBRA
If this applies to you, great! We're happy to have you. Stride Health is your partner to help you enroll in health coverage as well as dental, vision and life insurance. You can go to https://homebase.stridehealth.com/ where you can create a free account and start shopping!
For employers
Homebase has their own Help Center articles where they break down the considerations for either offering employer coverage or having your employees enroll in individual plans through Stride:
Employer FAQs
Employee FAQs
Health Insurance FAQs
For employees - Health Insurance
First of all, are you a full-time W2 employee? If that's the case you should be enrolling with your company's benefits department. Are you receiving a HRA (Health Reimbursement Arrangement), sometimes called ICHRA, to pay for your health insurance? If that's the case you can shop and enroll on our site, but not be eligible for the tax credit since your company is reimbursing you. We'll be glad to assist you with those questions if you reach out.
Open Enrollment is from November 1 to December 15. That's the time that anyone who is not eligible for coverage through an employer, a family member, Medicaid, VA or Tricare can enroll in health insurance.
Outside of Open Enrollment, individuals who experience a Qualifying Life Event in the last 60 days can enroll as well. The most common life events are moving to a new zip code, losing employer coverage or Medicaid, and a change in your household due to marriage, divorce or birth of a child.
Plan selection and premiums depend on where you live, your tax household size and your household income. So if you go to https://homebase.stridehealth.com/health and begin entering your information we'll show you all the plans in your area. We recommend adding your doctors and prescriptions so that the search results will show you which plans accept them, and how much it will cost.
Dental, Vision and Life Insurance
You can shop and enroll in dental, vision and life insurance all year long. Simply go to https://homebase.stridehealth.com/, select Insurance on the top menu, then either Dental, Vision or Life, and begin shopping.
Marketplace vs. COBRA
When an individual is losing their employer coverage, in some cases the employer will offer to keep them in their health plan through COBRA for several months. The employer will no longer be contributing to their premiums, so the individual will be responsible for the entire premium amount on their own.
If an individual declines COBRA, this could be a qualifying event that allows them to enroll in the marketplace and possibly qualify for financial assistance. This is important: it is necessary to decline/waive a COBRA offer in order to qualify for a marketplace plan with financial assistance. Also, it is not possible to terminate COBRA before it expires and apply for financial assistance for a marketplace plan.
If this is your case and you wish to enroll in a marketplace plan, we recommend submitting an application on Stride before the first of the month, and once it's approved you may go ahead and decline/waive the COBRA offer before the first of the month.
Any questions?
We got you covered! There is a widget on the lower-right of our page that looks like this if you want to enter a question but you can also:
- Find great articles in our Help Center
- Go to stride.link/support and send us a message
- Give us a call at (415) 866-3680. We are open from 8 am to 4 pm Pacific time (11 am to 7 pm Eastern)
- You can also contact Homebase by email support@joinhomebase.com or by going to this page https://support.joinhomebase.com/s/contactsupport
Looking forward to working with you!
The Stride Team
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