I started working for a new company recently, they offer health insurance for me at 135$ a month, but if I add my spouse it automatically jumps to over 500$ a month, they pretty much don’t cover anything for her insurance. Is this the normality? In my old company I was paying 200$ a month for both of us! I need some options please!
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Many companies don’t subsidize premiums for spouses as much as they do for employees.
This is why it’s important to ask about the full compensation package, including benefits costs, when considering a job offer.
While it may be controversial, subsidizing a spouse’s insurance is a form of compensation that single employees don’t receive. If a company spends $500 a month on a spousal subsidy, that’s an employment cost factored into the budget for salaries and other benefits. So, it’s money that isn’t available for other employee perks.
Subsidizing spouses does have a real cost that affects a company’s bottom line.
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Exactly. If they are covering the costs of a spouse’s premium, they are in essence providing more compensation to that employee than a single one.
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Spouses usually cost 15-25% more in claims each year compared to employees.
Employers don’t want to encourage spouses to join their plan, especially if they can get coverage through their own job. No plan wants to become a “dependent magnet.”
So, it’s common for employers to heavily subsidize employee-only coverage, giving the most benefit to their own workers, while offering less subsidy for spousal coverage.
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My company goes so far as to not even a low a spouse on the plan, as their primary insurance, if their employer offers them health insurance.
You can add them after demonstrating it would be secondary insurance, but it’s $$
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I had a similar situation at a large telecom company I worked for. They wouldn’t let you put your spouse on as primary if they had other coverage options. I wasn’t married, so it didn’t affect me, but when I asked how they’d know, no one could explain. I’m sure if there was a big claim, they’d figure it out and deny coverage.
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Always ask about compensation packages (especially health care coverage for dependents) before taking a new job.
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By law they have to offer ‘affordable’ coverage to their employees or face penalties. They don’t have to offer ‘affordable’ coverage to the rest of the employee’s family.
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I see…I was very lucky at my older job
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You were getting very lucky at your old job. My husbands is $60 a week for him and an additional $130 a week to add me.
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Some employers offer an employee + spouse-only plan, but usually, when adding a spouse, you pay for the family plan. For a family plan, it’s usually a flat rate, so even though for you it’s one spouse, for a coworker, it could be a spouse and five children, so family plans are usually more than just double the cost of a single plan.
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