Know Your Renewal Dates

Why do I consider this an insurance hack?  Most insurance hacks are going to be just knowing what the heck is going on with your insurance.  And I need to simplify this to where you can take small bites of my years of experience.  

Your plan renewal dates can help you keep money in your pocket.  

Your HR or maybe you buy on healthcare exchange, but before your renewal dates you might have an open enrollment period.  Been listing to BP Money and thinking about the H.S.A. taxable income reducing plan, what plans are available that you can change into? You have to do it before the open enrollment time has ended or it will be another year before you can plan that tax saving move.

Is your address up to date with your HR department or insurance plan provider to send you updates or changes?  The enrollment windows are usually very short, getting the information on time gives you an edge on making sure your not surprised for the next 12 months.   

My previous employer had 3 plans in one calendar year, but in the next year one plan was being retired, one plan was staying the same, and the lower cost plan was being changed to an H.S.A. high deductible plan.  In two years this same employer will merge with another group and the number of plans and options will significantly increase. 

Lets look at this last statement again, all the plans are changing for this employer.  They are going from a self insured group to having several options including HMO's.  If you have a doctor that you work with and you don't make a decision and are automatically enrolled in say the HMO Kaiser plan, you may not be able to see your doctor for a year.  All the clinics you normally go to will have to change and even where your kids or family go will be affected greatly by not making the right choice.

Not all plans have renewals for the same months.  Lets say you work for Boeing. They have Premera (Blue Cross).  the Deductible and out of pocket are done January 1st to December 31st.  If the spouse in the house is employed by a school district, that insurance may follow the school calendar year.  Starting September 1st and ending August 31st.  If your spouse needs a procedure done, it would be better to have it done before the school plan starts over, before your deductibles and out of pocket restart for the new insurance plan calendar year.  

Some of the trades have month to month eligibility based on number of hours worked.  and some of these plans end June 30th and with new insurance calendar year starting July 1st with new deductibles and out of pocket amounts.  

If your or someone in your family has Medicaid, it is very important to have your information updated to receive information regarding enrollments.  You and every member of your family can have different enrollment dates.  In the month of February you and one child may have an enrollment, but in June another child may have their new enrollment date.  Just because you and the first child have insurance does not mean the second child does.  Part of my job was to enroll patients and families into Medicaid, this really happens.  

the last thing I will mention, which will be my next blog post... renewal means new insurance card time...

Real world notes: The hospital I worked at would not take Regence PPO but would take Regence HMO.  Every year we had people that realized this too late.  The person would have to wait a full year to change during open enrollment to see their doctors and specialists again.  Sometimes a doctor is contracted with both, but the hospital facility where services are rendered is not, confusing things when the doctors office goes to get authorization for a procedure and then the hospital says it can't get authorization for the facility the procedure takes place in.

There have also been times where the insurance changed and the we would have to call the patient and the doctors office telling them that the authorization for surgery was no longer valid and a new one had to be obtained for the services to be provided, because a trade group changed from Regence to a self insured group or the patient was placed in a network that made everyone out of network including the doctor.  But the doctor had not reviewed the insurance in the new month/year yet so the doctors office didn't know.    

Your renewal period is either when you make decisions on your insurance for the following year or signals the end of the paid into deductibles and out of pocket maximums.  Decisions at this time affect your healthcare for the year, your money out of pocket and what you might have for tax advantages.