full time new job insurance - please help

rajgupta67

New member
Joined
Jun 25, 2018
I received an full time job offer and employer is offering me -(Blue Edge HSA) saying that this will be your health insurance.To my understanding its HSA contribution, which i can utilize towards docs bills. Is this a health insurance at all? Please see attached.

Second, i'm currently covered under my spouse plan, which is very good.Its PPO 20-80 plan. I think my potential employer knows that i am covered under my spouse plan. So he has come with HEALTH INSURANCE SPOUSAL SURCHARGE FORM asking me to sign. It says " If a participating employee has a spouse, whose employer offers insurance, and the spouse does not take it, an additional $200 monthly surcharge will be added to the participating employee’s premium."

To my understanding, I thought employer was not required to provide insurance to spouse who is insurance already through his own employer,which would have meant that i don't bring my spouse under my new potential employer. But this above statement is like if you don't bring your spouse to my plan i will charge you $200 monthly.

Please guide and help
 

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Joined
Oct 1, 2020
I received an full time job offer and employer is offering me -(Blue Edge HSA) saying that this will be your health insurance.To my understanding its HSA contribution, which i can utilize towards docs bills. Is this a health insurance at all? Please see attached.

Second, i'm currently covered under my spouse plan, which is very good.Its PPO 20-80 plan. I think my potential employer knows that i am covered under my spouse plan. So he has come with HEALTH INSURANCE SPOUSAL SURCHARGE FORM asking me to sign. It says " If a participating employee has a spouse, whose employer offers insurance, and the spouse does not take it, an additional $200 monthly surcharge will be added to the participating employee’s premium."

To my understanding, I thought employer was not required to provide insurance to spouse who is insurance already through his own employer,which would have meant that i don't bring my spouse under my new potential employer. But this above statement is like if you don't bring your spouse to my plan i will charge you $200 monthly.

Please guide and help
To my knowledge, an HSA/Health Savings Account by itself is not health insurance, but an account where a contribution is made and I think at times your employer will match your contribution in some way. Although, if the HSA has a health insurance plan with it as a package deal then it could be considered health insurance. It all depends on what they're offering.

BlueEdge Individual HSA and HSA 5000 are able to get standard coverage and certain benefits that other major medical plans may offer like hospitalization, surgery, doctors office visits, emergency care, and inpatient/outpatient.

Some prescription drugs/adult wellness care and child care with 0% co-insurance or 20% coinsurance at certain locations (probably referring to in-network) can be offered once the deductible is met.

Here is more information on this plan, it does sound like a health insurance plan with an HSA available and more can be found here:

https://www.bcbsil.com/country/hsa_plans.htm

(if you reside in another state, just find the right plan and state website page to guide you more accurately - I just picked the first one on the search engine).

I'm not sure your state's laws about employment benefits and such. Usually, if you are under your spouse's plans, you can decline any benefits offered by your employer and vice versa. There should be no penalty for this (once again, look at state laws to assist you on this). If your spouse has benefits already then I would think they'd just decline the benefits anyway unless they are wanting your work benefits instead of their own.

I asked my husband on this as well (we've both worked insurance before - different plan, but he knows this plan better than I do and what this spousal surcharge is). He says it's legal as long as they word it correctly.

Here's the example he gave me:

Say, I work at Humana and you work at BlueCross BlueShield. You have BlueCross BlueShield benefits already and it's now time for me to apply for my Humana employment benefits. They don't want to pay extra for my spouse deciding the Humana benefits are better when they already have their own BlueCross BlueShield benefits. If you drop your BlueCross BlueShield benefits and come over to my Humana benefits then that costs Humana more money than they want to pay thus they charge extra for their inconvenience - they make you pay for the plan.

I am hoping this makes a little more sense?


(Wow, just realized how old this post is - I apologize....)
 

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