You can still get a nationwide PPO in Kansas, and Kansas law can give you a bridge while you set up your own shop. Here's how electricians around Wichita and across Kansas are leaving small contractors without a gap in coverage.
Hi, I'm Sam. I'm a licensed broker who only works on health insurance, I'm based in Tampa, Kansas is one of my states, and you can handle it all with me by phone.
Wichita builds airplanes, and the plants and suppliers around them keep plenty of electricians employed on production lines, test cells and hangar upgrades. Out in the rest of the state, small electrical contractors with a handful of people wire farms, schools, shops and new homes. A lot of Kansas electricians start at one of those small contractors and eventually leave to work under their own license. When they do, they're walking away from a small group plan, and Kansas has a rule for exactly that situation that most people have never heard of.
After the bridge, you can still get a nationwide PPO in Kansas through me.
HealthCare.gov can't supply one. For 2026, the Kansas marketplace has 64 individual medical plans from 6 insurers, covering all 105 counties, and each is an EPO. With an EPO, stepping outside the network means you pay unless it's a true emergency. A PPO keeps some coverage in place when you see an outside doctor, though your cost share rises, and you never wait on a referral. To get one, you look to private plans that underwrite on health and contract with doctors nationwide.
Federal COBRA generally reaches larger employers. Kansas has its own continuation law, K.S.A. 40-2209, which applies to group coverage at employers with at least two employees. If you were covered for three months, you can continue the group plan after you leave. And the law says the premium must be the same as what employees still in the group are charged, so you pay the group rate with no added markup, though you pay all of it yourself.
Leaving the job also opens a special enrollment window on HealthCare.gov, usually 60 days, so you can compare continuation with a marketplace plan and, if you're healthy, an underwritten PPO.
This is the situation this page is built around. The cleanest path often looks like this:
The underwritten PPO works off a health questionnaire: the insurer approves you, declines you, or approves you with a past condition excluded. Good health is what can bring its price under the marketplace's full rate.
Next step: Call me a couple of weeks before your last day and we'll line up continuation and the plan you'll land on.
A new shop's first year can earn little, and Kansas has almost no Medicaid safety net for working adults, since it hasn't adopted the Medicaid expansion. The marketplace credit generally starts at the poverty level, so a very lean year needs a careful estimate. If anyone in your family has an ongoing condition, the marketplace is the safer home at any income, because its plans can't refuse you or price you on health.
Workers' comp, if your new shop carries it, covers injuries on the job and nothing else.
Next step: Send me your expected first-year profit and I'll show you where your household lands.
Straight answers, no sales pitch.
Often, yes. Kansas law K.S.A. 40-2209 provides continuation at employers with at least two employees if you were covered for three months, at the same premium charged to employees still in the group.
No added markup. The statute says the premium must be the same as for employees remaining in the group, though you pay the whole premium.
Not on the marketplace, where all 64 individual medical plans for 2026 are EPOs. A healthy electrician can get a nationwide PPO through me.
The special enrollment window that opens when job coverage ends usually lasts 60 days, in any month. If you elect Kansas continuation first, mark that date anyway, because you may want the marketplace option later.
How big the contractor is, when your coverage ends, your county and who's on your plan: send me those and I'll weigh continuation against every other option with real prices, including telling you if staying put is wiser.
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