You can still get a nationwide PPO in Illinois through me. In Champaign County the marketplace sells nothing but PPOs, so here is how travelers based there weigh it against a private plan.
Hi, I'm Sam Jaber. I'm a health insurance broker working from Tampa, licensed in 36 states, and I help travel nurses keep their own coverage steady while their contracts change. Everything happens by phone.
Here's a downstate picture. A nurse grew up in Urbana, worked a few years on a med-surg floor in Champaign, then went travel. She keeps a small condo near the university because her family is here and the cost of living is easy. This year's contracts are a winter in Austin, a spring in Portland and a fall somewhere she hasn't picked yet. Each agency plan ends with its contract, and between them she's home in Champaign County. When she looks at Get Covered Illinois from her home address, she finds something unusual: the only plans for sale are PPOs.
Get Covered Illinois offers ten individual medical plans in Champaign County for 2026, and all ten are PPOs from one insurer. That's common downstate. In 56 of Illinois's 102 counties, the marketplace sells nothing but that insurer's PPOs.
You can still get a nationwide PPO in Illinois through me too, a private plan priced on your health, with doctors in Austin and Portland counted as in network just like the ones at home. For a traveler in Champaign, the marketplace PPO and the private one are the two real contenders.
Help with the premium depends on what the household earns across the coverage year, and it reaches up to four times the federal poverty level. For a traveler, that total depends on how many contracts you sign, how long you rest between them, and any per diem or 1099 shifts you pick up. Start the estimate from signed and likely contracts, and update it whenever the schedule changes.
Losing job-based coverage gives you 60 days to enroll through Get Covered Illinois. COBRA can continue the agency plan, but dropping it voluntarily later, or letting it lapse for nonpayment, doesn't count as losing coverage and won't reopen enrollment. Decide which way you're going before you elect it.
Some nurses stop the cycle entirely by keeping one plan of their own all year, so nothing resets with each assignment.
Next step: Call me a few weeks before your last shift and we'll have your next coverage lined up.
Without the credit, you're paying full price for a PPO that treats most of the country as out of network. A private nationwide PPO is the natural comparison. You answer health questions, and the insurer approves you as you are, approves you with a specific condition excluded, or declines. A nurse in good health frequently comes in under the marketplace's sticker price, with in-network care in the cities where she's assigned. Plans set their own benefits, and we review them together.
Next step: Book a call and I'll compare a nationwide PPO quote with the full marketplace price for your Champaign address.
If you rely on a daily medication or a specialist, Get Covered Illinois is usually the safer home even at full price. Its plans accept every applicant and can't charge more for health. Confirm your specialist is in network and plan refills around your trips home.
Next step: List your doctors and prescriptions, and I'll check them against the Champaign County plans.
Get Covered Illinois open enrollment runs from November 1 to January 15. Outside that window you need a qualifying event, like the end of an agency plan.
Straight answers, no sales pitch.
No. For 2026, all ten Get Covered Illinois plans in Champaign County are PPOs from a single insurer.
A PPO covers out-of-network care, but at a higher cost to you, so check what you'd pay where you work.
Losing agency coverage opens a 60-day window to enroll through Get Covered Illinois.
Yes. If you're healthy, I can set one up privately for you.
Tell me where home is, your contract schedule for the year and your likely next assignment. You'll see how to cover the gaps and what each option costs.
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