Excellent suggestion re: the cafeteria plan.
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The only thing Iâd check is to make sure all doctors and hospitals he might use in his area are in network. I would think with a BCBS they would be, but I would still check. In my case, even though my kids work in the same state, our more regional company would not be in network for their doctors and hospitals. So they have their own
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Iâll definitely have him do that, but I think it will be fine, as we have used the in-network benefits in other states with no problem.
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We did that for S. Our coverage was better than that offered by his job, didnât cost us extra since the premium was the same with him on the plan, and he didnât have to pay the employee share for the insurance offered at work. Once he aged out, he picked up the insurance from work.
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S was offered insurance at his federal job which was a nice selection from a wide variety of plans but he was still covered at NO extra cost under Hâs family plan until he turned 26. He opted to just save the partial premium (employer would have paid the rest) and stick with our family plan. Our plan has a low OOP max ($2500, I believe) and great benefits anywhere in the country, so it seemed unnecessary to have dual coverage.
My brotherâs workplace started offering employees $100/month if they chose to waive insurance coverage because they were covered by other medical coverage. Once they offered the $100/month, several employees took them up on the offer and the workplace saved money and the employees were happy with the $100/month, so win/win.
Back when I had dual coverage from my employer paying 100% of my insurance and being under Hâs family plan, we had no problems with coordination of benefits. Generally I had no copays for anything, even when I had a very expensive drug I had to take daily for many months.
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I havenât read all of the replies, but I guess my question is if you have great insurance that youâre willing to keep paying for, why not just have him on that, and NOT the insurance offered through his employer? Thatâs what I did for my kids. When they turn 26 they would then sign up for the insurance offered by their companies.
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My two cents is that if you have other dependent kids, there is no point in your child taking other health insurance. Your current health insurance wonât be reduced in price just because your son is no longer on it.
Surely there is some out of pocket expense for your child? As a presumably healthy young person, he wonât need to use his insurance much anyway. I would also be very wary of two health insurance plans for one person because I can imagine bureaucratic nightmares.
Our eldest had a pricey monthly premium with her first post grad job and she really needed to save money. There wasnât an obligation to enroll in the company health plan. Our youngest was still in college so we just kept our family health insurance the same. As soon as the eldest aged out, we took health insurance for just myself and hubby.
To be fair to our youngest, we venmo him his monthly premium for his company insurance, until he ages out in another year. We are still saving a ton of money over having a family health plan.
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If the company health insurance has a HSA, you might want to consider that. Contributions to the HSA can be used for health care costs, but they can also just accumulate for the account owner. As noted above, your adult kid might not want to miss out on this benefit.
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Thanks!
Yes there is an HSA and an FSA, and a company contribution to the HSA as well.
So financially it makes the most sense to either choose the company plan or stay on their plan as well as mine.
I guess Iâm mostly weighing quality of the network in case of a rare health condition where in-network expertise may not be very strong.
I guess thatâs probably not very likely as he will be in the suburbs of a fairly large metropolitan area, so hopefully his available networks are pretty robust.
If your kid is staying on your plan, he should probably decline the employerâs plan and save himself whatever premium they want him to pay.. This may, however, make him ineligible for other health care benefits they offer, like FSA. This differs from company to company.
If you have 2 plans, you run the risk of both expecting the other to pay and lots of confusion about who is primary and who is secondary and, ime, nobody paying in the meantime. It is unlikely, as noted upthread, that the secondary will pay what the primary did not â even if itâs not a lot as neither is designed as supplemental or gap insurance. But I suppose you could do both.
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I do want to point this out but it may not be applicable
At my daughterâs first job, long term disability was included with her benefits package. At her second job, it was an extra cost. That you had to purchase when you accepted the job and health care benefits.
She opted to not purchase long term disability because she was young and healthy.
Then she got cancer and it would have been nice to have that option because recovery was longer than she thought but she now has FMLA but not the long term disability insurance.
Itâs a fortune 50 company and the healthcare package is top notch. No one expects a hiccup, I thought Iâd mention the mistake she made.
Iâm sure she will opt into insurance with her next job. She really likes this one and isnât looking for a change.
I guess my point is that itâs good to look into all the benefits and see what works best.
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Excellent point- and Iâm so sorry about your daughter.
I have never heard of only being able to choose a benefit (like LTD) at initial hiring and not being able to do a course-correction during annual benefits enrollment periods so thank you for the heads up on that.
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There will be no confusion as to which is primary and which is secondary as itâs regulated.
When my spouse and I had two insurances it was determined by âthe birthday ruleâ. Whoeverâs birthday comes first in the calendar year will be primary.
But a dependent working could be primary with parents secondary. So the main question for your son will be âDo we fall under the birthday rule or will my employee insurance be primary regardless of birthday?â
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Thanks!
Also, he may choose an HMO and my insurance has PPO/POS coverage, so I would think that when he uses the HMO itâs primary and if he goes outside the HMO my insurance would cover it.
But I will definitely get clarification for that!
His insurance will always be primary. If he goes outside of the HMO, it might get complicated.
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Having had two different insurances under the birthday rule it was great and we never paid anything. However, it was quite a challenge many times. I had to often fight the secondary for payment. Some providers wonât bill a secondary. Sometimes I had to battle the billing department from the provider because the secondary contract was less than the primary and then the provider would try to balance bill me. It was a battle. Since I work in a health field and understand coding, billing and insurance I was able to do it but I often wondered how people who didnât understand it would do it. Since itâs not going cost you anything itâs probably wouldnât hurt to do it, thatâs what we did with our first child (his employer insurance was primary) but it wasnât always easy.
Also, if he chooses a high deductible plan with HSA I donât think he can carry any other insurance so you would need to check on that as well.
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Almost everybody I know who had more than one child and a family plan kept their employed kids on their plan until they were 26 (if the plan covered the area where the kids lived). Once they were down to one kid, since the others had aged out, if that kid was offered insurance with their job, then they kicked them out so they could stop their family plan and just do employee + one.
I donât see any purpose to having two plans (theirs and yours). Why have the kid pay any premium if they donât have to?
Also, I completely disagree with not having young people get vision and dental plans. My daughter has both plans from her employer (has since her first job out of college) and she has used both benefits quite a bit (wears glasses, TMJ, had her wisdom teeth out, etc.) These premiums for one person are typically very low and are worth it.
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Whether dental plans are good deals depends on how subsidized they are by the employer. I have had employers that heavily subsidized them, so taking them made sense. But they would not have made sense at the unsubsidized prices.
For vision plans, something similar applies, but it also depends on if you use glasses and/or contact lenses â if you do, the vision plan can be a better deal than if you do not.
Our dental plans had very low caps on what they covered, as did the vision plans. I did sign up briefly for both and the whole family got dental & vision care during that brief window and for that brief time it was well worth the small premium.
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