Availability of short-term health insurance in Connecticut

Connecticut has very strict rules for short-term health insurance. As a result, the Connecticut Insurance Department has confirmed that there are no short-term plans for sale in Connecticut.

There are other types of non-ACA-compliant coverage available, including fixed-indemnity plans and health care sharing ministry plans.²

Federal rules regarding the maximum allowable duration for short-term policies have changed over the years, but states can impose more strict restrictions than the federal government’s, and Connecticut does. As a result of the state’s regulations, including a new essential health benefits coverage requirement that took effect in 2019,³ no insurers were offering short-term plans in the state as of 2019. That continues to be the case in 2026.

Although there are no short-term medical plans for sale in Connecticut, the state does have laws in place to govern these plans if an insurer chooses to offer them.

Short-term health insurance in Connecticut cannot have a plan duration over six months, and cannot be renewable. (2024 federal rules limit short-term health insurance to an initial term of no more than three months, although the federal government is no longer prioritizing enforcement of this rule.)⁴

Connecticut’s general statute 38a-476 requires health insurance plans to cover pre-existing conditions, unless the plan is “a short-term health insurance policy issued on a nonrenewable basis for six months or less.”

Short-term coverage virtually always excludes pre-existing conditions,⁵ so short-term plan duration in Connecticut is effectively limited to six months in duration. And it’s noteworthy that Connecticut’s law only allows them to exclude pre-existing conditions for which the patient received medical treatment/advice during the 24 months before the policy effective date.

As of January 2019, short-term health insurance in Connecticut was required to cover essential health benefits (EHBs), under a new state law³ that requires coverage on individual and small group plans and does not exclude short-term policies.⁶

In most states, short-term plans do not include coverage for all of the essential health benefits – maternity, prescription drug, and mental health coverage are most likely to be lacking.⁵

So it was not surprising that as of 2019, there were no longer any short-term plans for sale in Connecticut. Avoiding coverage for some of the essential health benefits is one of the ways that short-term plans keep their costs down, and a state-level requirement to cover essential health benefits generally makes the market unattractive to short-term insurers.