Yeah... sounds problematic

meara, that sounds super suspicious and like it does not bode well. Outsourcing never does.

My company went to all HDHP (High Deductible...mumble, whatever) medical insurance for next year.

Epic, my company added HDHP as an option this year. We still have our other Standard and Super Expensive Why Would You Do That Choice, though. I hope we don't lose them. I'm not sure why HDHP is ever a good option unless you've got so much money you don't even need to be working.

Good lord. I cannot focus. I've gotten virtually nothing done at work this week, my brain will not cooperate, everything is taking me twice as long as it should and I'm spending long periods of time in la-la land doing nothing. My boss asked me on Monday if I needed more time off and I should have said yes. This is not good, in a way that is bad.

We did the HDHP option for a while - it was combined with a Health Savings Account that was funded with pre-tax payroll deductions. It worked out okay for us, but we were not needing a lot of medical stuff at the time. The premiums were low enough our overall medical expenses were less than what we would have been out of pocket for the other kind of insurance that was offered.

Maybe I'm just scared away from it by the "high deductible" part!

Epic, my company added HDHP as an option this year. We still have our other Standard and Super Expensive Why Would You Do That Choice, though. I hope we don't lose them. I'm not sure why HDHP is ever a good option unless you've got so much money you don't even need to be working.

This used to be us. This year it's all HDHP, all the time. We're not pleased.

We did the HDHP option for a while - it was combined with a Health Savings Account that was funded with pre-tax payroll deductions. It worked out okay for us, but we were not needing a lot of medical stuff at the time.

This is the big gamble. You use the HSA to pay for your out-of-pocket stuff, but you can only use the money you actually have, not what you will have saved over the course of the year. So no big health expenses, you're okay. God forbid you're in an accident or your appendix bursts in January, that whole "High Deductible" is coming out of your pocket.

Maybe I'm just scared away from it by the "high deductible" part!

Precisamente.

The point of it is to be catastrophic insurance for people who are basically healthy and don't expect to have to use it. Having it as the only choice makes no sense at all.

Unless you're looking at the bottom line at the corporate level for a huge multi-national - from those seats it makes all kinda sense. In a "We don't actually care about you as human beings, we're required to provide a minimum, so that's what we'll do, and it's good enough that you still wouldn't get federal assistance if you decided to see if you could do better with the Affordable Care Act," kind of way.

I can haz fresh, good tasting water!!

The water here is private well, super hard and full of iron. But not anymore! And they're going to come back and insulate/heat tape the pipes.

We have an FSA program in my office and I signed up for it the first year. I was going to have to have cataract surgery and figured it would wipe out everything I could save. Well, it didn't, so I was left with a good-sized account to spend (you have to spend it by the end of your plan year ... which meant everyone participating was spending as much of what was in the account at the end). The drawback I found was that if there was one transaction they questioned, the card became unusable until you'd cleared it up. I was stuck about two weeks before the deadline with one thing they wouldn't approve because I couldn't get the receipts/proof to them - I tried mailing and, when I was ready to scan and email it, the item had disappeared from my account ... but they were still not letting me use the card. Took a while to get it cleared up.

Mine is a high deductible PPO. Locals have the choice of an HMO, but remote employees do not. There is a difference in deductibles. Mine is $3000 for a single, $6000 for a family. HMO is slightly less. Company makes things easier by paying 75% of the premium, and contributing half of the deductible. I can also roll over any of the unused deductible funds year over year, though I will always have $500 in the game. As these things go, I'm pretty lucky.

Any Boston/NH-istas and Chicago-istas in need of a good job, let me know. IT is hiring (Theodosia?), and there a number of admin/ops positions available.