I’m waiting to hear that response! Hoping they will allow him cash to get his own policy. So confused.
I thought Cobra cost the employer and employee portion. Some employers may pay their portion going forward as some type of severance. But Cobra coverage typically requires employee to cover both what the employee was paying and what the employer was paying,
Here is a Aetna and other insurance news update: Aetna is calling off its public insurance exchange expansion plans for next year as it becomes the latest big insurer to cast doubt on the future of a key element of the Affordable Care Act.
The nation’s third-largest insurer said Tuesday that significant challenges faced by the state-based exchanges are forcing the company to withdraw expansion its plans and think about its future participation in the 15 states where it currently sells coverage.
Aetna was planning to expand to a few states like New Jersey and Indiana for 2017. The Hartford, Connecticut, insurer said earlier this year that it had lost more than $100 million on its exchange business last year, but company leaders said they thought the exchanges still might represent a good business opportunity.
Aetna covered about 911,000 people through the exchanges, a small slice of its customer base of nearly 23 million.
The exchanges have helped millions of people gain health coverage, many with assistance from income-based tax credits, but several prominent insurers say they are bleeding money on this business.
The nation’s largest health insurer, UnitedHealth Group, has drastically cut its presence in the exchanges, and the Blue Cross-Blue Shield insurer Anthem also recently reported a loss from the still-new business. Health insurance cooperatives created to compete with established insurers on the exchanges also have floundered badly, with most folding after selling coverage for only a few years.
Companies say they have been struggling with higher-than-expected claims and a shortfall in government assistance, among other issues, since the exchanges opened for enrollment in the fall of 2013.
It is not a static situation…
Yes, the company info says that the Cobra cost is the entire portion, which actually is pretty reasonable in comparison. Blue Shield told me that group plans are generally more expensive than individual plans, which is totally opposite from what I thought.
Who knows what’s going on with the exchanges, sounds like everyone is pulling out!
I believe I paid about $360/mo for coverage for S in the months between when his U policy ended and when he was covered again by our family policy due to ACA. $1000/month is high for poor coverage but I believe it’s not that high for a GOOD policy.
Aetna and Anthem are just playing hardball with the US government, by crying " wolf", in an effort to get them to approve their mergers with Cigna and Humana. Their income was UP 8% over last year.
"A less-charitable interpretation of some insurers’ sudden increased aversion to Obamacare is that they are reacting to the Department of Justice’s efforts to block mega-mergers between Anthem and Cigna and Aetna and Humana. The firms could be playing hardball, using the specter of withdrawing from the exchanges as a bargaining chip. And in the absence of the big revenue and scale boosts these mergers would provide, sticking around and losing money in Obamacare may look even less attractive.
In any case, these companies are capable of weathering the storm. Even with its Obamacare difficulties, Aetna’s adjusted net income for the quarter grow 8 percent year-over-year to $791 million. And many of the ACA issues are resolvable. For example, Aetna noted the government’s risk-adjustment mechanism doesn’t include drugs, which drive a large amount of spending."
Okay, thankfully this was clarified! Apparently the company will put $440 towards the policy monthly for my son, not an additional cost of the policy. So basically a pretty decent policy (it’s like the platinum plan) will cost him $60 a month, which is a fantastic deal. The policy cost is about $6K yearly, opposed to what I’d thought was almost 12K, for a 26 year old. Whew!!
@busdriver11, I feel like he just got a raise.
Glad it worked out.
$60/month is amazing and great deal! 
Tell him to put the difference (or maybe half of it) in a retirement account.
Actually he just signed up to fund his Roth 401K (couldn’t before this) , and got a raise. Was making me ill that he’d have to spend much of his raise on health insurance because he turned 26. Very relieved, now.
Yippee! I love Roths! Good for our kids to have them!
My “lecture” to all the young people I know who are graduating is to open a Roth IRA, and deposit at least as much as your employer is willing to match.
Bringing this to the front page for @Midwest67 to find. Can’t believe it’s on page 10 of cc now, seeing as retirement seems to be foremost in everyone’s mind!
My son has a lot of money not invested, and I don’t know what to recommend, but he’s thinking about one of those target retirement funds. I guess that’s as good as anything, but with the market the way it is, to invest all at once, or at periodic intervals?
I’m a bit baffled as to why one would invest in fixed income investments (as target funds sometimes do) in a ZIRP/NIP environment. Maybe higher-dividend stocks? Real estate in non-bubble areas might be more akin to a decent fixed income investment. Not sure.
A market index fund would be my suggestion if he’s not too interested in picking and choosing funds. I find target funds a little gimmicky (unless someone can convince me otherwise).
HAs far as timing, it depends on how much he wants to focus on it. He could invest part now and other parts on downdraft days (we put some cash in on Brexit day and it wound up being a good move) or he can just throw it all in there. Sure, they’ll be some ups and downs but since he’s young and his time horizon is long, its all noise in the long run. In the meantime, he’s missed some opportunity for appreciation if it’s just been sitting there.
I don’t know much about the target funds. I figured they’d be pretty aggressive if the target is 40ish years away, but maybe not. They’re through Vanguard. Better than my suggestion of Ally Bank (1%), regardless! He’s pretty conservative, so I don’t know about stocks.
If you’re more conservative, nobody forces you to tell the truth about which year you will retire. Pick a decade or two earlier. I think the max equity is 90%. So, if you’re planning to retire in 2040, invest in a 2030 fund.
Re dollar cost averaging: I can’t find it now, but I saw the different ending portfolio value between investing at market highs (bad) and investing at market lows (good) over some long time (30 years?), and the difference was not as major as you’d think. I’m accumulating for maybe 5 more years, but I still invest what I have when I have it. If accumulating for 30 years, I think it’s clearly preferable to just dump it in, but if you’re afraid of regrets, put half in now and time the rest.
This has always cracked me up and I am not saying I am better. I do this sometimes.
We hear this all the time. Keep some cash to buy on declines in the market. 5 percent cash. 10 percent cash.
Sounds good. Let’s see how that works.
Let’s say you have $100,000. You don’t want fixed income. You are young. You are 90 percent invested. Waiting for this 10 percent correction. Then you want to be 100 percent invested in stocks. So you are invested $90,000 in stocks and $10,000 in cash.
You have $10,000 in cash. Market drops 10 percent. You buy stocks. How much did you save by not spending that cash immediately?
@busdriver11, assuming he is in his low earning years, I suggest he max out a ROTH IRA. I started roths for my kids last year,mounting in as much as they made (clearly, they didn’t make much). We did Vanguard, target date fund.