Help! Help! I'm being Stiumlussed!
Feb. 22nd, 2009 07:36 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
captainsblogChrist. Seven years of college down the drain.-- future U.S. Senator John "Bluto" Blutarsky
----
That's kinda how I'm feeling about all the effort we've put in and expertise we've gained about our health care plan. After weeks of dealing intensively with this Brave New World of non-employer-paid medical insurance after Eleanor got laid off, along comes the most wicked of curve balls I could have expected.
The backstory was this: when Eleanor got laid off in November, we were given our totally useless rights under an earlier federal law- known, frighteningly, as COBRA- to continue our existing HMO coverage for the entire amount, plus 2 percent, that her Asshole Prior Employer (hereinafter "APE") had been paying. This would have cost well over $1,000 for just the month of December and significantly more (we never even got the memo as to how much) for January and each month thereafter after the 2009 rate increase kicked in. It was completely unaffordable, would have dropped off after 18 months anyway, and my previous experience with COBRA on dental insurance was hideous, so we declined the "offer."
Instead, we went with a lower-cost plan through a business group I belong to, but which has already run us over $3,500 for the first three months of 2009 and for which I have a bill for another $1,750 sitting in my in-basket due on March 1st. In fairness, those costs are artificially high, since (a) the plan requires full payment of most expenses until an annual deductible is met, and (b) we've had an unusual run of medical and dental expenses in recent weeks compared to prior years. Even with those costs, we expected to pay less this year than Eleanor's share of her APE coverage cost last year.
Until now.
----
Deep in the heart of the Stimulus Bill, signed with mucha hoopla last week, is a provision I just found out about. It subsidizes 65 percent of laid-off employees' COBRA costs for a period of nine months, and even former employees beyond the usual 60-day cutoff for COBRA coverage are being given a one-time right to sign up for the coverage, beginning March 1st. As I understand the basics of the bill, the APE is required to pay 65 percent of the former employees' insurance for those months, the IRS then offsetting the cost with a payroll tax credit. We'd then pay 35 percent of the cost, which even if last year's premium doubled (which it didn't), would keep our minimum monthly premium around the not-quite-$600 it now is, but those dollars would once again cover almost all of the other out-of-pocket monthly costs for doctor visits, prescriptions and whatnots which we've been paying the full freight on ourselves at a cost of another 600 a month thus far. That's 600 a month we could, frankly, use to stimulate the economy.
Ah, but there are details, and the devil resides deep within them. APE is only required to pick up this cost if it still offers insurance to its current employees. We have no feckin' idea if they do. Also, the plan we'd been on might not still be available to us, depending on whether the insurer dropped that particular "Flex Fit" option from that employer (as they've done almost every year in the past to at least some of their participants.) Also also, there's a serious question of whether we can do what I'd want to do, which is pick up our old plan as of April 1 (ironic, non?) so the nine months will last us through the end of the year, by which time Eleanor will hopefully be full-time at Wegmans and eligible for their Insurance Plan You Can Feel Good About™. My fear, though, is that they will make COBRA retroactive to December 1st, making us pay twice for three months to achieve saving for another six- and STILL leave us with a month or two where we'll need some other kind of coverage if Wegmans hasn't kicked in by then.
I won't even try to post here about the tax consequences of all this, particularly the ones tied to the Health Savings Account which makes our whole current plan work, and which we're not even allowed to have if either of us has "traditional" insurance coverage.
Don't get me wrong, Barack- I appreciate the helping hand. But if you'd just nationalize the whole fucking thing instead of making these prehistoric medical molecules bounce into each other like this, it would be a LOT easier for me to understand.
----
That's kinda how I'm feeling about all the effort we've put in and expertise we've gained about our health care plan. After weeks of dealing intensively with this Brave New World of non-employer-paid medical insurance after Eleanor got laid off, along comes the most wicked of curve balls I could have expected.
The backstory was this: when Eleanor got laid off in November, we were given our totally useless rights under an earlier federal law- known, frighteningly, as COBRA- to continue our existing HMO coverage for the entire amount, plus 2 percent, that her Asshole Prior Employer (hereinafter "APE") had been paying. This would have cost well over $1,000 for just the month of December and significantly more (we never even got the memo as to how much) for January and each month thereafter after the 2009 rate increase kicked in. It was completely unaffordable, would have dropped off after 18 months anyway, and my previous experience with COBRA on dental insurance was hideous, so we declined the "offer."
Instead, we went with a lower-cost plan through a business group I belong to, but which has already run us over $3,500 for the first three months of 2009 and for which I have a bill for another $1,750 sitting in my in-basket due on March 1st. In fairness, those costs are artificially high, since (a) the plan requires full payment of most expenses until an annual deductible is met, and (b) we've had an unusual run of medical and dental expenses in recent weeks compared to prior years. Even with those costs, we expected to pay less this year than Eleanor's share of her APE coverage cost last year.
Until now.
----
Deep in the heart of the Stimulus Bill, signed with mucha hoopla last week, is a provision I just found out about. It subsidizes 65 percent of laid-off employees' COBRA costs for a period of nine months, and even former employees beyond the usual 60-day cutoff for COBRA coverage are being given a one-time right to sign up for the coverage, beginning March 1st. As I understand the basics of the bill, the APE is required to pay 65 percent of the former employees' insurance for those months, the IRS then offsetting the cost with a payroll tax credit. We'd then pay 35 percent of the cost, which even if last year's premium doubled (which it didn't), would keep our minimum monthly premium around the not-quite-$600 it now is, but those dollars would once again cover almost all of the other out-of-pocket monthly costs for doctor visits, prescriptions and whatnots which we've been paying the full freight on ourselves at a cost of another 600 a month thus far. That's 600 a month we could, frankly, use to stimulate the economy.
Ah, but there are details, and the devil resides deep within them. APE is only required to pick up this cost if it still offers insurance to its current employees. We have no feckin' idea if they do. Also, the plan we'd been on might not still be available to us, depending on whether the insurer dropped that particular "Flex Fit" option from that employer (as they've done almost every year in the past to at least some of their participants.) Also also, there's a serious question of whether we can do what I'd want to do, which is pick up our old plan as of April 1 (ironic, non?) so the nine months will last us through the end of the year, by which time Eleanor will hopefully be full-time at Wegmans and eligible for their Insurance Plan You Can Feel Good About™. My fear, though, is that they will make COBRA retroactive to December 1st, making us pay twice for three months to achieve saving for another six- and STILL leave us with a month or two where we'll need some other kind of coverage if Wegmans hasn't kicked in by then.
I won't even try to post here about the tax consequences of all this, particularly the ones tied to the Health Savings Account which makes our whole current plan work, and which we're not even allowed to have if either of us has "traditional" insurance coverage.
Don't get me wrong, Barack- I appreciate the helping hand. But if you'd just nationalize the whole fucking thing instead of making these prehistoric medical molecules bounce into each other like this, it would be a LOT easier for me to understand.
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no subject
Date: 2009-02-23 01:22 am (UTC)B) If he tried to nationalize this horrorshow, the Republicans would rip him to pieces with their teeth. I think you'd have to shoot nearly every insurance executive and mojor stockholder -- a lovely idea, which I could support, but also unlikely.
C) Good luck with this!
no subject
Date: 2009-02-23 01:56 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-02-23 03:07 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-02-23 02:45 pm (UTC)What does a Cobra do? Stands up, Strikes you, vemon slowly runs thru you and you die!
Antedote? Maybe, if you get lucky.