DS25 is graduating in a couple of weeks and will start his new job shortly thereafter. I have extremely good health insurance and it won’t cost any extra to keep him on it. My plan is a POS plan with an HMO component. This is very confusing to most providers, but in practice it has meant that I can use the POS portion without needing any pre-approval from the HMO – I just pay at a higher rate.
DS25 will be working in the same state, but 500 miles away, and will be offered his own health insurance options. My guess is that none will be as good as my plan in terms of either available providers or comprehensive, low-cost benefits.
Are there any downsides to having him be on both plans? I have been reading that he has to make both insurance plans aware of the other.
Are there any upsides? I think we aren’t too worried about the day-to-day stuff which I don’t expect much of as he is in good health. Worried about the out-of-the blue expensive stuff that of course can happen to anyone in terms of unexpected illness or accident.
It kind of depends on the plans, whether there are upsides. The big downsides will be probably some unsnarling of other people’s confusion. ETA - also downside that paying for 2 plans.
The first confusion will be which plan is primary, because usually a person’s own job’s is primary, but also usually the longer-standing plan is primary (I suspect the former will be true but brace yourself for refusals to pay).
The second annoyance will be that the insurance industry in the USA is extremely lax-ly regulated, and as a result, they write their own guidelines as to who covers what. You might think, being a sensible human, that if you have two plans that each cover 80%, that you won’t pay anything. Ha ha, the oligarchs have that one covered - some plans will (as secondary) only pay 80% of what’s left, but even that seems good compared to their newest way to screw people. This entails a policy that “when secondary, if the primary has paid at least as much as we would, we pay nothing”.
You may be able to tell that I’ve been in this situation and that I feel it’s ridiculous. These companies ALREADY screw us sideways and then to have a rule about paying nothing despite our paying the regular full premium and qualifying for approved expenses, well that’s just BS in my opinion.
It will matter a lot which policy brand you have. In my experience, Blue Cross is great to have as secondary, because they often just pay the “rest” and don’t play carve-out games. Most others are awful.
Then get ready to fight with providers to bill more than one company, and to keep which is the primary and who is the main insured on that policy, particularly now that your son is older than 18 and in theory is managing this on his own.
We kept our 27 and 28 year olds on our plan until they were 26 (H checked with the company) so they wouldn’t have to pay. We have a family plan, and a high deductible.
If you want to keep him on your plan wouldn’t it be better if he doesn’t take any insurance through his company? We kept both of our daughters on H’s plan until they were 26 then they switched to their own plans where they were working.
The downside is being over-insured (your plan may not be expensive but his might be)… which theoretically means FANTASTIC coverage but as others have noted- read the fine print. So you could be paying twice for coverage which is only marginally better than just having one plan.
Your son needs to review his options at his company carefully. Young employees often take optical, dental, etc. when they RARELY pay out except if they have a known issue/diagnosis and can price out a comparison. But the generic “Why wouldn’t I want a dental plan?” usually means you’ll lose money when it’s said and done. MANY dentists would rather negotiate a fixed price and have you pay out pocket- immediately, as you are checking out-- vs. waiting and the back and forth with an insurer (ask me how I know. I now negotiate all of it- Xrays, regular cleaning, fixing a chipped tooth, etc.)
Note the Blue Cross is a collection of different companies, so the practices of Blue Cross in one state may not be the same as Blue Cross in some other state.
Good point re: the dental work! I’ll start doing that myself.
I don’t think it’s going to cost any more to keep DS25 on my plan, as I already have a spouse and another kid on the plan so no incremental costs in terms of premiums and a fourth person doesn’t raise the OOP family maximum as far as I can tell. But I’ll definitely read the fine print!
That does depend on how much (if any) subsidy the employer gives with such a plan. If the employer subsidy is high enough, it may cost the employee less than two dental cleaning and checkup appointments per year.
(I had a young colleague who was paying a lot for employer-sponsored life insurance. When I asked him who he felt he needed to cover…it was no one. So he dropped it and saved a lot.)
My employer plan is good. We just have the one plan, and my spouse waives their health benefits. It wasn’t worth the money to have both, as the premiums would have cost more than our out-of-pocket max, and they may not have covered everything anyway.
It’s not any cheaper to have 1 vs 2 kids on my plan so I’m guessing my eldest will stay on my plan even after becoming eligible for his own benefits. The bigger decision will come with the younger one, and deciding whether or not he stays on our plan until he’s 26.
Our family plan does not allow for adult children to stay on the plan if they have insurance offered through their employer.
My daughter‘s company makes a very sizable yearly contribution to her HSA account. If she had been able to stay on our plan, she would have missed out on that benefit And it’s substantial.
Is this legal with the ACA? I thought that kids are allowed to stay on their parents’ plan. It’s not clear to me that it should be up to the employer of the parent..? But I don’t know because this hasn’t come up for my family.
WRT the other question, my Blue Cross (good) experience was in MA, but when I read about Blue Cross coordination of benefits, I don’t remember them restricting by state. OP can check.
MMRose: “Good point re: the dental work! I’ll start doing that myself.”
LOL at first I thought maybe you’d do dental work on yourself
OP, I don’t think your son’s new company would force your son to take their own insurance unless he is otherwise uncovered. It sounds like there are cases where YOUR company might force him to take his own, though how this would work in practice if he’s on a family plan with no additional cost, I have no idea.
He should certainly ask: if I am otherwise covered for health insurance, and waive the company’s plan, is there any credit or cafeteria benefit or money that comes back to me?
