Companies that provide full medical coverage for employee dependent care at no additional cost to the employee are increasingly rare. If you are paying for your spouse and children to be covered under your employer-based health insurance, you may be surprised to find that you can save money by purchasing individual health insurance for your dependant family members.
If you are covered by a group health plan on the job, it may be well worth your time to shop around by obtaining a quote on an individual health insurance plan for your dependent coverage. If your spouse and children are in reasonably good health, a significant saving on the amount of your monthly health insurance premiums may be realized with an individual health plan.
Most employees do not realize that while their employer may contribute a large amount toward the health insurance premium to cover the individual staff member, the employer does not pay the same amount towards the coverage of his or her family. In fact, many companies pay little or nothing towards the coverage of spouses and children, which makes private-market dependent care rates comparable with dependent care under the employer plan.
If your husband or wife is young and in good health, a monthly health insurance premium for an individual plan may well be lower than your employer-based group healthcare plan. The reasoning behind this is that the group plan must account for actual usage by its members, with higher statistical usage from older and less healthy adults. Since the group has to insure the healthy along with the not so healthy, group rates tend to be higher than individual rates. Group rates are also usually based on the average age for the entire group, so if the average age of the group is 45 years old, then the average health insurance premium rate will be based on someone of that age.