As I’ve mentioned in some other threads, I’m involved in an extremely rapid job change. The speed of the process is making some seemingly routine matters difficult. But speed is of the essence since this is a matter of a government contract moving from one company to another, and the new contractor needs to hit the ground running.
My future employer only has high-deductible health insurance plans (the kind you use with HSAs). I would rather go on my husband’s insurance, which is a conventional PPO. But because of the extreme hurry, I may not be able to get the right documentation of a life event to the right people in time. So I may have to go on my new employer’s high-deductible plan for three months, after which my husband would add me to his plan during open enrollment and I would not elect to use my employer’s plan for 2018.
If you have a high-deductible plan, must you have an HSA? And if you must, what happens to any money left over in the HSA if you get a different type of insurance?
Obviously, if I’m only going to be on a high-deductible plan for three months, I don’t want to leave any money in an HSA.
COBRA would cost almost $700 a month. I could end up paying about $2000 for COBRA to carry me through the rest of the year. I don’t think that’s the best choice, although it’s certainly an option I should have mentioned.
Your contributions to an HSA are entirely voluntary. You set what amount is taken out pre-tax. Also your employer may make a contribution (you can find that out). Money in HSA can continue to be use to re-imburse medical expense or reimburse yourself if you paid out of pocket -even if your insurance changes.
Ask husband’s compamy and push them about getting you covered. Be on the phone with HR/Benefits, ask questions and you should be able to get it done. Consider cobra for one month, if you think its needed for transition.
I didn’t set up an HSA account, each time I had such a plan. The account allows you to stash pre-tax dollars. IME, you don’t have to.
Have you spoken with his benefits folks? Not sure why you can’t just provide proof of the job change (the offer and start date, to get the ball rolling) as the life event and get a cert from your present insurer to show present (ie, “continuous”) coverage (ime, comes quickly. IIRC, they can email it. ) Your husband’s plan wouldn’t need to wait for open enrollment and though your coverage via his may take some time to establish, it should be retroactive. No?
The continuous coverage detail is a 90 day window, no gap longer than that.
@lookingforward, you’re one of several people who have mentioned retroactive coverage to me.
How does that work?
My current insurance ends September 30. There is a grace period for getting retroactive coverage after that. But what do you do if you need care during the grace period? You don’t have an insurance card or an insurance number that you can use in place of a card. What happens if you need to see a doctor? How do you refill your prescriptions? What do you do if you need to go to a hospital in an emergency?
It’s all a matter of time. The various HR departments are off-site, and communications are slow. It takes hours to get an answer to even the simplest questions, and often the answers are wrong. I’ve already provided exactly the documentation my husband’s company asked for, but that documentation turned out to be insufficient. My own company hasn’t been able to process my resignation in a timely manner because nobody could figure out the department code for the department in which I work. This cost me an entire day so far, and the problem still may not be resolved. And the company I’m about to go work for outsources its HR to India, which means that it takes 24 hours to get an answer to every question. And I only have five days left before the job change.
I also don’t know whether I will be allowed to make/receive personal phone calls or access my personal email at the new job. If I can’t, I don’t see how I can resolve anything after I start work there. Every inquiry to everyone would take 24 hours because I would only be able to communicate at night.
I also do not understand why it would take 3+ months to get on your husband’s health insurance. With most companies, all he would need to do is either sign you up online himself or have someone from HR to do it for him, then they would contact your husband to get the proof of life event (that may take few weeks), but meanwhile you would be covered while they were waiting for any additional documentation from you. Few times when I have done it, they gave me up a month to send in appropriate documentation.
@partyof5, that’s great to hear. That’s exactly what I was hoping to learn.
It’s so great that there are many well-informed people here.
@oldfort, I’m dealing with an accelerated time frame (5 business days from resignation to departure, with my new job starting the next business day) and with hard-to-reach people of questionable competence in all the relevant HR departments. And when I get to my new job, I will actually need to work instead of constantly being on the phone to various HR people whining about my personal problems.
It would have been better if I could have given two weeks notice. That would probably have allowed enough time for everything to be resolved. But (1) my old employer doesn’t want me to stay for the second week because I would have to bill the entire time to overhead; (2) if I gave two weeks’ notice, I would start the new job on October 2, which means paying for an entire month of COBRA to cover me for just October 1; and (3) my new employer wants me to start as soon as possible. So everyone wins because I only gave one week’s notice, except for the difficulty in processing everything quicker than usual.
@Marian - congratulations with your new job. It is not easy to get a new one when one is of certain age. I think it would just take one phone call (or online) from your husband to add you to his health insurance. You would be covered from the day after you leave your current job. You would have a period of time to provide necessary information to your husband’s benefit department.
BTW - your husband would have to do it, his HR probably won’t talk to you.
You can try using your cell during lunch breaks. If you don’t have one, now’s the time to consider a cheap Tracphone. Many operations have online chat.
Your resignation is a separate issue. Keep documentation of your resignation letter and and comm’s, so no one later says you walked off.
Pretty much, what oldfort just wrote.
For his insurance, what documentation is missing?
If you need something from your present insurer, that’s a call to them, not India.
How things work with med needs until you’re officially finalized on his policy is also a question for the insurer, not HR.
How about email, can the current employer send a letter via fax or email to your H’s HR department verifying the date you will no longer be considered to be an employee?
Eventually, they could. When my current employer can actually process my resignation, which they have not been able to do because no one could figure out the number of the department I worked in.
But this is not enough. The date of my resignation is not the same as the date when my insurance ends. The insurance ends seven days later. I don’t know whether the HR people can verify the ending date of the insurance.
According to my husband, what his company needs (at least the latest version) is (1) documentation, on my company’s stationery, that I have resigned (the resignation date does not matter), and (2) documentation, on my company’s stationery (or perhaps the insurance company’s stationery) of the date when my insurance ends.
@mommdc, thank you very much for your suggestion. I realize now that I might need email information for the HR department at my husband’s employer, and that’s information I don’t have. I will try to get it, which may take some doing since my husband can’t make phone calls during the day (he can’t even bring a cell phone into the building where he works for security reasons).
Marian - when you leave your current employer, won’t you need to sign some paperwork?
When I added D2 to my insurance after she graduated from college, which was not during the enrollment period, my insurance company asked for a termination letter from D2’s student insurance company. It was a standard letter. I think I just called the 800 number and it was emailed to me.
Something to consider is how your expected cost would compare between the plans, based on your share of the premiums plus the amount you pay in deductibles and copayments in each option. Depending on how the plans’ benefits and their employee premium shares are structured, it is possible that the high deductible option has a lower expected cost.