Coverage by two HDHP plans
Hi all,
I've been on my employer-sponsored HDHP HSA plan since the beginning of 2023, which has generally worked out very well for me. At the beginning of this year, I enrolled my spouse onto the same plan, since my employer pays 100% of the premiums for all family members.
Now, this is where I thought I was being smart: I thought that it would make sense for my wife to also enroll into her employer-sponsored HDHP HSA plan, which would cost her ~$40/month in premiums, and her employer would fund her (our) HSA with an ~$80/month. I saw it as an easy way to get an extra ~$40 into our HSA every month. As a result, her primary insurer is the one provided by her employer, and my employer-sponsored insurance is her secondary.
My employer-sponsored insurance coverage is really good, and I had assumed that my spouse would only get better coverage by having two insurance companies reimbursing her medical expenses. Unfortunately, and this is what I hadn't foreseen, coordination of benefits has been a nightmare, and my employer-sponsored insurance has been really terrible at giving us any kind of clarity on what’s going on (and very slow at responding). For instance, on a recent routine in-network ultrasound, her primary insurance reimbursed their portion, and her secondary insurance is 1) not paying us anything of the portion that’s left from the primary, and 2) saying that this visit did not contribute anything towards our deductible. My understanding was that whatever is leftover from the primary’s reimbursement would count towards the secondary’s deductible (assuming in-network, etc). Is that not the case?
To add to all this: we have our first kid due in July, which I know will generate a lot of new medical expenses. I think it's a no-brainer for me to enroll the kid onto my health insurance, since we get better coverage on my insurance and my company covers 100% of premiums for all family members. Since coordination of benefits has been such a pain, we're contemplating using this qualifying life event to remove my wife from her employer-sponsored insurance, so that she's only enrolled on mine, and we can end this CoB nightmare. Any thoughts regarding how that could backfire? Thanks in advance!
submitted by /u/powder_to_the_people
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