<p>I think wife can stay on HER parents plan if under 26. Not her husband’s parents plan.</p>
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<p>Yes, she can if she is under 26 and under.</p>
<p>Really, lerkin? We applied in hospital for birth certificate and got the certified copy weeks later. </p>
<p>(Along with another kid’s birth certificate, I might add!)</p>
<p>Then, we applied for SS. </p>
<p>Then again, maybe not remembering correctly.</p>
<p>Samurai,</p>
<p>Quite frankly, I don’t remember (I disclosed that :)). </p>
<p>However, millions of babies were born and were later added to their parents plans within 30 days grace period. So, I don’ think getting SSN on time is a big problem :).</p>
<p>If she is over 26 and cannot get coverage for her or child thru husband’s plan because they will not pay for spouse or child, why can’t she qualify for subsidy on exchange? I must be missing rationale for this.</p>
<p>Yeah, lerkin. But a lot of things have changed. You did not have to verify identity with most insurance as stringently in old days. Hanna has been trying fruitlessly for weeks to do this on exchange just to apply for insurance weeks or months away.</p>
<p>I do not even remember sending copies of birth certificate to insurance to sign them up. Last year, I had to dig up all marriage and birth certificates to certify with Kaiser that they were dependents.</p>
<p>Hm, I’m willing to give delete-and-redo one shot, since I’ll have to do that amount of work with BCBS if I go straight to them. I’ll report back.</p>
<p>Good luck :). </p>
<p>I didn’t even know delete was an option. I just made a new one. :/</p>
<p>I wonder how many duplicate accounts are on that site?</p>
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<p>Couple of years ago I had to send my tax returns to verify that my kids and my husband qualified for my employer’s coverage. </p>
<p>You are right, many things changed.</p>
<p>“If she is over 26 and cannot get coverage for her or child thru husband’s plan because they will not pay for spouse or child, why can’t she qualify for subsidy on exchange? I must be missing rationale for this.”</p>
<p>Because the subsidy is dependent on whether they can get coverage on the husband’s plan not on her age. As long as the husband’s plan doesn’t charge the husband more than 9.5% of his salary and the plan offers dependent coverage, no subsidies for wife and baby.</p>
<p>This is probably a whole new thread, but wondering what happens to surrogate baby industry…does insurance cover infertility and surrogacy? So confusing.</p>
<p>But spouses are being excluded from some plans. Children aren’t always automatically covered, either. </p>
<p>Still no subsidy?</p>
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<p>I plan to abandon my account (Can I actually delete it?) and let my wife create an account and sign up for insurance for both of us. Just waiting until we both have a little time.</p>
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<p>If she is over 26, she would not be on her parents’ insurance. The original post seems to indicate that she is on her parents’ insurance.</p>
<p>However, in their situation she and the child would qualify for subsidy if her employer does not provide affordable insurance (regardless whether or not she, herself, can get insurance through her parents).</p>
<p>P.S. GP, you are incorrect.</p>
<p>NJers, I’m not sure. I just tried to log back in to my old account and it won’t let me. It doesn’t give me an error message or anything, just sends me back to the login screen.
No problem logging in to either my current account or my fiance’s account. Hm.</p>
<p>I think GP is right here. If the husband’s employer provides insurance that is affordable for the husband, and if the husband’s employer provides ANY insurance for the wife and baby, affordable or not, then neither the wife nor the baby qualify for subsidies. This would be an obvious possible area for a legislative fix.</p>
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No, actually on that point GP is correct. The questions that determine subsidy eligibility are:</p>
<p>1) Is the cost for “self-only” coverage of the employee less than 9.5% of his income?
2) Is the spouse and/or dependent child eligible to be covered on the employer’s policy?</p>
<p>If the answer is yes to both questions, then there is no subsidy eligibility.</p>
<p>This is not an express provision of the ACA – it was an ambiguity in the law that has been interpreted that way in the regulation, so theoretically it is subject to revision or challenge. But for now, that’s the rule that applies.</p>
<p>So the real question simply becomes whether the un-subsidized cost on the exchange is more or less than what the employer offers. If income is too low, then the child might qualify for CHIP.</p>
<p>This may create an incentive for some primary wage earners to want to change jobs. Unlike the situation in the past where many peoples stayed with jobs they didn’t like for fear of losing their insurance, some families may find they are financially better off if the family breadwinner quits the job with the employer-provided insurance, either in favor of a job with an employer who offers better benefits, or with a smaller employer who does not provide insurance.</p>
<p>That is interesting. When my H has had employer insurance, families always included - he might have to pay more, but spouse and dependents never excluded from getting coverage. </p>
<p>Some employers are doing that, now - excluding spouse and child coverage. </p>
<p>This is an area ripe for a legislative fix.</p>
<p>I believe that all employer policies are legally required to offer coverage for dependent children; but it is ok to exclude spousal coverage.</p>
<p>The problem isn’t whether or not the spouse and/or children are included – the problem is whether the employer subsidies them.</p>
<p>So the scenario is something like this: employer offers a great policy, and the full premium cost of the coverage for an individual is $800 per month. But the employer opts to pay 90% of that, so the employee is charged only $80 per month for his share. </p>
<p>However, to buy family coverage for spouse and child, the premium would more than double – let’s say it is $1900 to cover the whole family. But employer doesn’t offer additional subsidies, so to put the whole family on the employer plan, the employee would have to pay $1180 ($1100 for the additional premium cost, plus the $80 he was already paying). Let’s say the employee earns $32,000. On that salary, the $80 was clearly affordable (3% of his salary) – but there’s no way he can manage $1180/month on his income (that’s 44% of his gross salary).</p>