Sometimes it sucks to have a subsidy

At NG, the employee may enroll his or her spouse in the health plan, but if the spouse gets at least a 50% subsidy from his or her own employer, then NG requires that the spouse also get health insurance through his or her own employer.

It would cost $988/year to get good health coverage for Josh through NG.

Northwestern offers a subsidy of $948, and two health plans: a really crappy one for $1896 ($948 cost to us), and a decent one for $2664 (cost of $1716 to us).

So because NW offers a 50% subsidy of a plan that Josh doesn't want, it'll cost us about $728 more to insure him, and it'll cost NW $948 more.

Or we can put him on the NG health plan and the crappy NW plan for yet an additional $220 (plus the $728).

Bah. It's tempting to write a letter to the powers that be a NW suggesting that they subsidize the health insurance at only $947 next year. I mean, why do they have to hit 50% right on the nose?

Not that this is really gobs of money or anything, but it's so dumb. And it's really frustrating that we have to pay more for the priveledge of having access to the same doctors, no matter whose plan we'd try to have coverage under.

(no subject)

Anybody know what "Behavioral Health Services" are?

They seem to be one of the very few things covered by Northwestern's cheap health insurance plan before the deductible (actually, they seem to be the only thing other than perscription drugs covered by that health insurance plan before the deductible).