Job Change

Q. I recently changed jobs. At my old employer I was paying $100 per month for a plan that had $15 copays and $0 deductible. My new plan has $25 copays and a whopping $3000 deductible. On top of that, I am asked to pay over $700 per month for coverage. Is my new employer ripping me off? Is there a government agency that regulates this?

A. Your new employer is contributing less for the cost of health insurance than your old employer. This is not uncommon.

Your former employer had a much richer plan, and probably paid 90% or more of the premium. Your new employer is paying somewhere around 30% of the premium.

Government has tried to require businesses to pay a percent of payroll and lost. Most recently Maryland tried to tell Wal-Mart how much they should pay toward the cost of health insurance and lost in court.

You should have made sure you understood all aspects of your compensation package before making the change.

Between now and your next open enrollment you need to look in to dropping dependent coverage and picking up a dependent only carve-out plan. Doing so can probably save $300 per month or so.

This entry was posted on July 23, 2006 at 5:59 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site.

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