I want to talk a little bit about people who are employed and have sponsored healthcare. Being a local employee health insurance agent I want to take a look at what to do when you have a spouse and children who are not covered by your employer on your employee insurance. If you have employee health insurance that’s sponsored by your employer, you may have a great plan, and you may like your plan.

However, I have found that a number of people who have employer health care, cover 50% of the premium for just themselves. This means that if you have a spouse or kids that also need health care coverage, your employer is not footing the bill on that, and you will be bearing the full cost. In a lot of instances, that would just be too expensive for families. Many people cannot afford to put their whole family on the plan because they’re not getting any help with the premium.

There are a couple of ways to approach this. Firstly, I always teach people that not everyone in the family has to be on the same policy. A lot of people don’t actually realize that if you have a spouse and they also have employer health care, that each spouse can have their own healthcare through their own employer. What often happens is that sometimes one plan is better than the other, and so the couple is left trying to decide what to do. In this case, I advise that you’d have to evaluate your overall needs and budget and decide which plan is best for your family. Even though the employer is paying for some of your costs, you may have needs that are not covered under your plan, and it may make sense to go on your spouse’s plan instead.

There are also instances where an employee will choose to be on their employer’s plan, paying their own portion, and it works out best to put their spouse and children onto a private PPO plan. They will then not qualify for a subsidy on the Marketplace – that’s really important to know if one of the couples is offered an employer sponson plan. You could still have marketplace coverage if you want, but I usually don’t recommend that because you’re going to pay just as much as you would on the employer plan. In this case, there are other options that I would recommend looking at, such as private PPO plans, and some short-term plans that actually run for a whole year even though they are technically short-term plans. And since insurance is renewed each year, if you do find yourself choosing a short-term plan, you can always re-evaluate in the next open enrollment period.

If you have any questions about whether or not you have other choices for your spouse and kids, if your employer is not helping to cover the costs on these dependents, please let me know. I am a local employee health insurance agent and I am here to help, so please schedule an appointment with me. I am happy to review what else is out there.