A Quick Guide To Open Enrollment

With most people in or near their open enrollment period this time of year, it’s a great time to take a look at how the trends in health insurance may impact you and your family. Congress continues to duke it out over whether or not (and how) to overhaul the Affordable Care Act and there is understandably a lot of uncertainty around how any changes will affect coverage for people NOT covered at work.

One ongoing trend is how employers are starting to either charge a steep premium to cover spouses that have coverage available at their employer or they are not offering coverage to those spouses with their own option at all. In addition to all of those, there is an undeniable trend towards high deductible health plans paired with a Health Savings Account (HSA).

Things to consider

This is not all necessarily bad news, but it does mean that choosing your coverage continues to require more time and study than before. Here are a few things that you may want to consider:

  • If you or a dependent have chronic health issues and one spouse has access to a plan with lower deductibles and co-pays, make sure that child or spouse is on that plan.
  • If you have traditionally had your entire family on one plan but both spouses have health coverage available, you should start looking into whether your doctors and providers are in the networks of both plans. If so, see if it may make sense to go ahead and put the spouses on different plans now. Even if your company isn’t charging a premium for “covered” spouses, it may be less expensive overall to be on different plans.
  • Max out your HSA(s). The money that goes into an HSA lowers your taxes today and comes out tax free as long as it is use to pay qualified health care expenses. The money that isn’t used stays in your account and continues to grow tax free, even if you leave your job or switch plans.
  • If you are married with children, compare the costs in each plan of one spouse on an employee only plan and the other spouse on an employee + dependents vs both spouses being on an employee plus child plan. Having both on an employee + child plan is likely to be more expensive but if the prices are the same or similar this approach may allow you to put more into each HSA account, lowering your taxes and increasing funds available for future health care costs.
  • As always, take a good look at any pending issues such as braces, lasik, etc. that are in your family’s future and plan accordingly.

Planning your health insurance may be a lot more time consuming than it used to be, but this is a case where 15 minutes could possibly save you a lot more than 15%.

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