For years and years I've said there are things I need to be better at: taxes and insurance. Taxes have gotten easier. Judy sends me a license every year for H&R Block tax software, I enter the info and bang, money back. It's easy enough.
But then there's health insurance with work. When I started with Synaxis in Jan of 2024, it was easy enough. I signed myself up, Marci and the kids stayed on f'n United Healthcare with her school. At open enrollment for Synaxis, they changed companies or something, also joining UHC. It was easy enough and I think the kids stayed over with Marci.
Then this year when I got hired with Zones, though the healthcare was still with UHC, my dental changed to Delta Dental and vision to Vision Savings Plan. Both of those were better than what Synaxis had offered. And it looked like moving the whole family over to UHC via Zones would save us some good money, so we did that.
Fast forward to yesterday when I picked up some of Marci's prescriptions at Safeway. She said it would be expensive but when I was given a bill for $154 or so, I was a little surprised, but I figured that's what she said. Later at home, when I mentioned the price of the meds was more than the food we bought, she flipped her lid.
After some research and discussion with Judy, it turns out that I did pick the right plan to save the most money per month but... I didn't take into account Marci's needs for MS infusions and treatments, as well as some other medical issues she's managing. When I chose insurance, I did the research and asking around, but since Marci's stuff costs more, it turns out it makes more sense to pick the most expensive PPO plan, which we pay a bunch per month, but her procedures are more covered.
If there's a good thing, it's that her open enrollment is in August and mine is October. Which means we are on the hook for some of the stuff this summer, but come August, she can get back on her work's PPO plan and I can keep the kids over on my plan.
Ultimately, things will be OK and work themselves out. I just wish I could catch these things before they happened! With the increase in pay, we haven't had much in terms of "lifestyle creep," more bill/expenses creep with school (Riley/Marci) and now this insurance snafu.
Meh, first world problems.
