I currently pay 27 dollars twice a month for just myself. I’m looking to add my spouse to my insurance plan. If I add children it increases my premium to 190 a month, if I want my “whole family” covered it gets increased to 245 a month.
Why am I not able to just add my spouse for 55$ a month?
This is some bullshit. Thanks America.
Addendum: Just heard back from HR, this is working as intended.
You have to pay for health insurance? When I heard US residents had to get insurance through their work I assumed employers would actually provide the insurance, not just give you the chance to pay for it yourself… We have free healthcare here and my employer still for some reason provides us with free health and dental insurance.
You guys need a revolution. You’re getting charged more because that’s what you as a country allow them to do.
America is not a civilized country anymore, if it ever was.
Generally speaking, health insurance through employment are priced at 3 levels of service:
- Self
- Self plus one
- Entire household
Generally speaking, each additional person is cheaper than the last additional person. So option 3 is almost always the cheapest per person, with option 2 being pretty cheap per person, and option 1 being the most expensive per person.
That fact is obscured by the fact that generally speaking, employers only give a diminishing subsidy so that they’re covering less and less as you add more people to the plan.
So if option 1 is $250, and option 2 is $400, and option 3 is $500, maybe the employer will contribute $200 for option 1, $250 for option 2, and $300 for option 3 so that your portion of the premium is $50, $150, and $200.
Also the reason why insurance is cheaper per person when a bunch of people bundle together is because there’s less risk of each covered person being really sick, and more likely that it’s just one person in the family who needs a bunch of treatment, so the higher out of pocket max tends to make the per-person cost cheaper for the insurance company, and therefore for the person paying premiums.
Children don’t have nearly as much medical expenses as adults
I think that’s only as correct as you narrow your lense to make it.
Children incur many more expenses.
Adding an adult only increases the total 60$, adding children increases it 190$, obviously children are more expensive.
No, it’s absolutely correct as you broaden it to consider the average adult costs vs the average child.
The real reason you see this is that your employer gets a SUBSTANTIAL subsidy for YOUR insurance via a payroll tax credit. They do not get this for your spouse, so you see the true cost for them.
Children have maybe a few doctor appts per year, maybe an er visit every so often. Chronic illnesses are extremely rare. Adults on the other hand have many more specialist appointments, hospital stays, chronic issues requiring follow up appointments. Adults cost way more to insure and that’s why the costs are so different.
Comparatively, kids are quite cheap to insure.
It’s to encourage people to have children. The good Christian way.
Premium, dude!
More like creamium
Thats incredibly cheap for a whole family (if this is medical) just FYI. I know it doesn’t feel like it but I used to work in insurance and thats about what you would end up paying. Except most policies are around 100$ more for family at the very least.
Yep I pay an outrageous $1100/mo for my spouse and I. The coverage isn’t even that good. Looking to shop around this year because that big of a bite out of paycheck really hurts, but I suspect I’m not going to find any better.
Because we’re running the country like a business now. Which means the shareholders matter more than the people. Plus, we’re doing some layoffs right now…
Interesting too that adding a spouse is 2x your own insurance.
Take the “entire famlly” rate and subtract the “you+children” rate. $56.27 for just the spouse.
I don’t think this should be the case, of course, but it “makes sense” that they don’t subsidize it. OP’s spouse is not an employee, therefore not as valuable.
Those kids are future
wage slavesemployees!Thats awesome! Mine is 900 a paycheck. So we are on Medicade. Which is about to go up 1000$ because America. I’d say it would be cheaper if i died, but, without my income my family is homeless. They wonder why Luigi did what he did.
I pay $370 a month if I were to add my family it goes to about $800
You just have a shitty plan that wants you to get on your wife’s insurance instead.
Agreed. My work offers me the option to add a spouse or children or both.
