Annual Enrollment is Awful

TheEngineer · Nov 6, 2015

My wife and I are both offered insurance from our employers, but they of course don't have their enrollment periods at the same time so we have no way to make a comparison between the two plans before one closes. Then on top of it, there's no good way to compare plans once we do get all of the information because they all describe the same things using different terminology. Normally we just use my wife's plan because it is co-pays vs the co-insurance on mine, but now they added a $100 "spouse surcharge" if your spouse has coverage offered to them from their employer to my wife's plan.

Every year I wind up making this elaborate spreadsheet trying to allocate costs across the year based on out of pocket costs, deductibles, coinsurance, etc. It shouldn't be so complex, this is just stupid...

<End Rant>

pelphrey · Nov 6, 2015

My thoughts on this are the same. My wife and I are both offered better than average coverage from our employers. I have her and our daughter on mine and she has her and our daughter on hers. Open enrollment is always different for us as well.

Waters · Nov 6, 2015

My wife and I have the same problem. As soon as her company added the surcharge, we switched over to mine.

TheEngineer · Nov 7, 2015

I'm waiting for them to add a surcharge for me to be on my own plan.

koifishy · Nov 10, 2015

In general, I find health insurance to be confusing. Is it normal to talk your company's HR about this issue?

Dtackett · Nov 10, 2015

its almost all a rip off. the few good plans out there are a PITA to figure out and can be costly in the start but have great coverage and great co-pays where as most plans try to charge you as much as possible while providing as little care as possible and fighting you every step of the way. im lucky my new job provides GREAT health care with low costs and low co-pays but my last job was charging me 50 a week, would fight me on everything, would tell me an urgent care was covered then I would get a bill a few months later saying they didn't cover it, wouldn't let me goto a specialist of any kind without a doctors referral then would demand a different doctors referral all while charging me for each visit saying they don't cover that doctor. my last health insurance was UHC and I owe over 4k because they would lie about what they covered and what they didn't.

now I pay about 50 a month and have a 10 dollar copay through a company funded health care plan.

TheEngineer · Nov 11, 2015

I'm not bemoaning the monthly cost, for our family it is around $450/month for medical. The problem too is that this plan is likely to get worse still because of the upcoming "Cadillac tax" provision.

$50/month is dirt cheap in my opinion. Are you in a union?

Dtackett · Nov 11, 2015

icecool2 said:
I'm not bemoaning the monthly cost, for our family it is around $450/month for medical. The problem too is that this plan is likely to get worse still because of the upcoming "Cadillac tax" provision.

$50/month is dirt cheap in my opinion. Are you in a union?

nope. just work for a good company that takes care of us. when I was union my insurance was free for me. that 50 a month is just for me. but if I signed up for obamacare my insurance would be around 300 a month. and its went up since I looked up my rates 2 years ago.

4FordFamily · Nov 11, 2015

there's a 300 dollar charge for working spouse here...

Our deductibles (comparing low deductible then to low deductible now) have tripled and our premium has doubled over the last 3 years. It's unreal.

Two separate plans means two separate ridiculously high deductibles.

My wife works in the healthcare field (pharmacist) and I have an MBA and understand much of the business "jargon" and language and we still don't understand this crap.

Dtackett · Nov 11, 2015

3FordFamily said:
there's a 300 dollar charge for working spouse here...

Our deductibles (competing low deductible to low deductible) have tripled and our premium has doubled over the last 3 years. It's unreal.

My wife works in the healthcare field (pharmacist) and I have an MBA and understand much of the business jargon and language and we still don't understand this crap.

yup. that's all it is. crap.

TheEngineer · Nov 12, 2015

My employer (who shall remain nameless) hikes up the out of pocket max and deductible each year, but keep the weekly contribution the same. Then they have the nerve to come out and say that they managed to work against market pressures for increased costs and have saved us money. what the heck!? This company has 60,000 engineers working for it, do they think we can't do basic math?

One thing I'll give my wife's employer is that my daughter's coverage is free until she's 19 and that's good for up to 3 kids. Really low deductible (like $100 I think) and office visits are $25. I look at these other costs as just a way to pay more for that portion.

koifishy · Nov 15, 2015

What's a 'Cadillac' tax?

TheEngineer · Nov 15, 2015

Insurance offered by employers that exceeds a certain threshold is subject to a new tax.

Reduck · Nov 15, 2015

It is a load of crap isn't it? Last year I got hit with the working spousal surcharge. This year the surcharge went up.
Next year it all changes for the worse again with all the new rules and regulations.
It my least favorite time of year. Makes my head spin staring at all the comparison charts..

All I know is that every year, it costs me more money.

And don't get me started on the insurance companies and their billing practices. I can't tell you how many times they shut my FSA card off because of their inability to communicate with their own mail order pharmacy...