The Ominous HR Letter
My spouse’s insurance coverage through his employer traditionally renews in August. There is often some sort of rate increase, and in the past, his employer has made noise about looking at other companies to provide their health insurance. His employer pays a portion of my spouse’s coverage, but we pay the entire cost of the premiums for the rest of our family. So usually in August we get what I like to call a pay cut. The premium goes up, more is taken out of my spouse’s checks, and our take home pay goes down. And so it goes.
Well, this August, that didn’t happen. But not because there wasn’t a rate increase. In fact, the rate increase was so severe that my spouse’s employer basically said they were going to aggressively pursue other options, and while that was happening, they would absorb the rate increase for all the employees and families themselves. I have no idea how much the rate increase was, and I was very pleased that our rates weren’t going way up immediately and the company was absorbing the cost themselves, but I must admit I’ve been a little bit on edge about the whole thing ever since. I don’t like when things are up in the air and uncertain.
Well, when we got back from Memphis, an email from my spouse’s HR department was waiting for him in his inbox. The email requests he go to a meeting tonight to discuss a number of changes to their health care plan that will take effect as of November 1st. In fact, they encourage spouses to attend as well (which I can’t do because we have no one to take care of the kids). I can only assume that they will be changing to a new health care provider, and it terrifies me. Yes, our current provider is expensive. Our premiums alone over a year are about $6000 (the part that we pay) and our deductible is $1000 per person. Yikes. But they cover most everything, they have a huge network of providers, and I’m comfortable with them. I know what I am dealing with. Let’s just say I am resistant to change. What if the kids pediatrician doesn’t take the new insurance? I went through a lot to pick this pediatrician. What if the prescription coverage is worse (my spouse has expensive asthma medicine every month we pay a reasonable copay for), what if the office visit copays are worse, what if what if what if….. Ugh. I’m very very nervous.
I hate change. I can only hope whatever is coming will work out even better for us. But at the same time, I’m glad my daughter’s 12 month well baby checkup is on Tuesday… before November 1st.
If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!
You can also: Stumble It! Bookmark Submit to Reddit Submit to Tip'd
October 25th, 2007 at 6:57 am
Wow, in Canada we may be taxed pretty hard but at least we don’t have those medical costs!
October 25th, 2007 at 9:05 am
Ah, that is just the tip of the medical cost iceberg! lol
I’m kind of dreading my spouse coming home tonight and telling me what the news is.
October 25th, 2007 at 10:09 am
I also have an insurance switch, but it is changing 1/1/08. I’ve looked over the plan, and it seems very similar to the old one…but it makes me uneasy to think about changing health care plans….
Good luck with your change…
October 25th, 2007 at 10:11 am
Oh, I can really empathize with you here. We’ve had to change insurance companies twice just this year! I’m living without my allergy meds this month because the new insurance cards haven’t arrived yet (coverage started Oct 1) and I won’t pay the $150 out-of-pocket. Not only that but I need surgery and can’t move ahead with the biopsy because I don’t have that insurance card!!
I hope everything works out well for you guys and that you’ll be able to stay with the same providers. A few years ago our network dropped our family doctor. I still haven’t found anyone I like nearly half as much for the kids. Luckily they’re past those days of well-baby care but they need annual physicals for sports participation. And that reminds me, my daughter needs her second Gardasil shot. If those cards don’t arrive within the next day or two I’m going to have to pay out-of-pocket and then go through the hassle of filing paperwork for reimbursement.
October 25th, 2007 at 10:42 am
Good luck SavingDiva with the change!!
Elizabeth - I hope your cards come soon. That just stinks! I wonder if you could call the co and get a temporary number or something you could give the doctor….
October 25th, 2007 at 1:09 pm
If it turns out that your doctor doesn’t accept your new insurance, be sure to lobby him to start accepting your new plan. Doctor’s offices are businesses after all, and don’t want to lose customers.
And for Mark from Canada, you do have “those medical costs”. You just pay for them through those enormous taxes!
October 25th, 2007 at 2:37 pm
Can I lobby them to accept the new insurance? Hmmm…. I never considered that. thanks!
It is a practice though with several doctors so I’m not sure she has any specific clout over the whole office accepting anything.
October 25th, 2007 at 5:17 pm
Don’t freak out if its an high deductible HSA plan…I’ve converted over to one and the high deductibles initially seemed pretty frightening, but when you look at it on balance the premiums are much less and you have a tax deferred account that becomes your asset…Imagine putting a chunk of that $6,000 in a tax free account that’s yours…If you need it its there, if you don’t you keep it and it builds wealth…you might consider looking for a private policy even.
When my company changed over I thought it was going to be a bad deal until I sat down and really looked at the cost difference. My old plan had copays and deductibles and 80/20 after that. The HSA you pay out of your tax free account until you hit the high deductible. An office visit around here is like $75-100. With a $25 copay your really talking about a $50 difference, but the difference in premiums more than made up for this. If you get really sick you’ll hit the deductible…If not your building an asset instead of shooting premium money down a rathole…
October 25th, 2007 at 7:10 pm
That’s just insane. I’m self employed and our insurance coverage is better than that at $365.00/month for a family of four.
October 25th, 2007 at 10:44 pm
I’m glad someone pays less than us
October 25th, 2007 at 10:46 pm
@Jason - yep, one of our options is now a high deductible HSA plan. We’re not going with it though, i crunched the numbers and it just won’t work for our current situation. I asked my spouse if he’d stop taking his asthma meds… (joke! well i did ask but I did not want him to agree
). maybe if Advair ever gets a generic equivalent……
I’ll be writing a post about the financial aspects of it all in the next few days when i sort it all out coherently
October 26th, 2007 at 4:35 am
I’m with Mark, that’s a lot of money to pay for medical care.
I don’t think that having insurance effectively tied to an employer is a good system because you are at the mercy of the company you work for as to the price that you pay and the doctors that you use.
October 26th, 2007 at 6:16 am
If you want one subject that makes me furious almost every time I think about it, this is it. @Mark/@Jason: trust me, if you live in the Northeast US your taxes are higher than Canadians. We’ll all be wishing we lived in Canada before it’s over with (seriously). The US health system is broken. @Jason: sure, today that high HSA plan is cheaper, but I bet in 10 years you’ll be paying the same premium for that plan that you pay for a low deductible today. And how many of us are confident that employers will even offer health insurance in 10 years? I am not. I pay $400 per month for a family of 3, and my consulting “umbrella” company is switching their insurance again this year. I’ve been with maybe 7 different health insurance companies in my 15 years of working, and the switch was always made for one reason: to save the corporation money. There is no other reason. Ever.
I really do think that anyone who looks at any statistics about the state of American health care will realize that what we are doing to ourselves by reelecting politicians who care more about the health of their corporate masters than that of their citizens is going to be one of the two or three most criminal assaults on our republic in its history. We are the only western nation without some form of socialized medicine. It is increasingly stifling entrepreneurialism, hurting the hospitals and doctors who should be providing care not fighting insurance conglomerate bureaucracy and worst of all keeping many Americans from staying healthy NOW and making them wait until they have no choice to seek help for medical conditions.
Sorry about shrieking from the soapbox but this subject, as I said, just makes my blood boil - and despite all the gum-flapping from our current batch of presidential candidates, I’m fairly sure everything will be the same but even worse in 10 years.
October 26th, 2007 at 11:28 am
I’m not in favor of the whole insurance-tied-to-an-employer issue… but it is what it is. We’re working with what we have at the moment.
And yes… it is a whole lot to pay.