Sometimes it sucks to have a subsidy

[sillygoosegirl]

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.

Comments

[willworker.livejournal.com]

I assume the language is such that you can't simply say "My spouse's employer offers a <50% subsidy of [the 2,664 plan]; $988 < 0.5 * 2,664; ergo, let me get my health insurance"?

Steve

[sillygoosegirl.livejournal.com]

It reads, "However, Northrop Grumman requires that your spouse also enroll in his or her employer’s medical plan if that employer pays 50% or more of the cost of their plan." I assume it means any of the plans, not all of them. Even if the spouse's only plan available is an HMO, and the spouse has no intention of ever going to any of the HMO doctors, he's required to sign up for it (this example was further down the page). The deal, I believe, is that NG doesn't want to provide a subsidy for a spouse when they can make the spouse's employer subsidize it instead.

It seems like it sould be much simpler and make everyone much happier if we could say, "Look, it's worth $948 to Northwestern for Josh to have health insurance. We'll pay the $988 to Northrop Grumman for Josh's health insurance, and Northwestern will pay $948 to Northrop Grumman to (fully or partially) offset the cost of the subsidy Northrop Grumman is giving Josh." This way everyone should be happy, Josh gets the health insurance he wants, Northwestern pays $948 to make sure their employee gets health insurance, and Northrop Grumman isn't subsidizing what they could get someone else to subsidize for them.

But health insurance isn't that simple. If it were that simple, they'd call it something else.