Please don’t give me some political answer about Obama care or get on a soapbox about your feelings, I’m simply trying to figure out if this is worth pursing.
OK, changing employers and this is causing a change in health care plans us. (‘us’ is a couple). The old one and the new on is a PPO, but there is a significant cost increase and the deductible is much higher on the new one. The new one being offered is going from a $3K deductible in-network to a $6K a year deductible in-network. Also, the cost per month increase is an additional $400.00. Total cost a year is $11,160.00 a year (Aetna’s MedSure Medical Plan).
Are there other options? Is the Affordable Care Act a better option? I wanted to ask if this is what’s expected for a couple in their mid 50s to pay? The old employer was using a different plan by United Healthcare. Who knows, perhaps they too would be changing to this more expense plan too?
I would greatly appreciate some thoughtful opinions minus any political opinions or complaining about the government. Thanks!
You can create an account on healthcare.gov and compare the plans in the exchanges yourself. No idea if they will be more or less expensive, but you can at least look.
If your employer is offering you health insurance, and the portion of the premiums that you’re paying is less than 9.56% of your annual AGI (adjusted gross income), you’re not eligible for Obamacare.
I’d use it as a bargaining chip to settle your new salary. I assume you made $X at your old job, and are looking for a minimum of $X at your new job. If new salary minus health care costs is less than your old salary minus health care costs, you took a pay cut when you changed jobs.
I’ve brought that up in salary negotiations before and the new employer agreed and increased the offer to cover the increase in health insurance costs.
I also remember this web site, www.healthsherpa.com, which makes it very easy to figure this out.
It looks like it would cost $100-$150 more a month, but the deductible would be $2k-$2500 instead of $6K. So it looks like the new employer plan is the better deal in our situation. I guess this helps the sticker shock and just need to get use to this.
It looks like ACA doesn’t really kick in as a low cost until the household income is $60K a year or less. Until now I’ve not paid any attention to ACA as an option because our cost was lower from the employer.
If your employer offers coverage, then you’re not eligible for any Obamacare subsidies. So, anything you buy on your own will amost certainly be drastically more expensive than your employer’s plan.
Didn’t take a pay-cut even with this health insurance increase, but it will be brought up during the first review. The same thing next month could have occurred at the old job. Employers change plans without much warning too.
My last employer was willing to pay all the premiums on a plan so crappy that I still felt more comfortable buying an subsidy-free plan on my state’s exchange. Instead of a free high deductible plan with excessive co-insurances, I got a platinum $0 deductible no coinsurance plan for about $230/month. Obviously that wouldn’t be possible for a couple in their 50s but it worked for me and offered the advantage of not being at all tied to my employer.
Although I have to admit I have no idea why **Terr’s ** post says I wasn’t eligible. Maybe I bought the plan illegally unwittingly.
Anyone can purchase a private plan that meets ACA requirements, on or off an exchange. The “9.56% rule” is th affordability test that determines whether your employer is meeting the employer mandate to provide affordable coverage and also whether you might be able to get a government subsidy.
Thank you. “Obamacare” for me is shorthand for “bought on exchange, with subsidies”. From my research before, without subsidies, plans bought on or off exchange are exactly the same price.
I think your high-deductible plan would make you eligible for a Health Savings Account. Does your employer offer one? If not, I think (but am not 100% sure) that you can set one up by yourself through a bank.
The HSA would let you contribute money to an account on a pre-tax basis. This money can be used to pay your medical expenses. Unlike the somewhat similar FSA (Flexible Spending Account) the money put in the HSA is not “use it or lose it” – it rolls over to succeeding years.
As I understand it, the HSA acts much like an IRA except that any withdrawals for certain health care expenses are penalty-free. When you retire you can roll this over into your other qualified retirement account(s). There’s a cap on how much you can put into this account, but this is in addition to any IRA or 401k contributions you may be making.
My husband and I have an HSA. His employer contributes to the account (and you should check to see if your new employer make such contributions). We contribute the max. Last year I had 3 surgeries and we ended up paying some of our costs out of the account, but this year we’ve decided to as much as possible pay health care costs out of our general funds to maximize our qualified retirement savings. (We are both 62, so retirement is we hope just around the corner.)
The amount of the premium you pay through your employer, is dependent on how much they are paying in the form of an employee benefit.
If you once worked at a company that traditionally provided health insurance as a benefit with subsidized premiums, then switched to a different employer that only now provides health insurance as required by law and provides no subsidy to its employees as a benefit. The premium the employee pays will go up.
So when changing jobs and understanding your total compensation, you can’t just ask, “Do you provide health insurance?”. You need to understand the details of your premiums, deductibles, etc.
No need to do this and a big advantage to not doing it. My wife and I have had HSA accounts for six years now and will continue to use them in retirement - paying medical bills tax free even though we can no longer contribute to them.
If we rolled them into our IRA accounts, we would pay taxes when we took the money back out.
Insurance premiums are paid pre-tax. Could it still be paid through a flexible spending account?
This employer does offer something I never heard of before. It’s Aetna Fixed Indemnity Plan which is “a competitively price supplement health plan designed to provide fixed cash benefits to help cover out-of-pocket expenses such as deductibles and copays that are associated with most major medical plans”. I don’t know if this is worth it or not, or exactly what this covers yet.
All of this was taken into consideration for this new job. I’m not crying about it, the increase more than makes up for it and there are additional positive factors at the new job that didn’t even exist at the old one. My posting was if there were better options for a plan not offered by the employer.
At one time, all employers paid 100% of my premiums. It’s all based on the talent pool and what the employer is willing to pay. The previous employer might have very well decided to follow this new employer’s model and only provide what is required by law and not subsidize it at all next month. In that case, everyone in the company would be going to their boss asking for a raise to cover the additional costs and they would unlikely be accommodating. It’s like stock options, some major companies started to do away with offering stock options and then the other companies followed this practice too, only offering it to higher level management and officers of the company.