Can your employer hassle you about the insurance?
Both my wife and I have insurance from our work. But my work had been asking me if I really need two insurances. They are trying to cut their cost by asking me to drop my insurance from my work, which will save them a few dollars. I don’t get any compensation for this due to some tax issues per my boss. Are they allow to make such statement?
Tags: employer, hassle, Insurance
They are allowed to ask. They aren’t allowed to force you.
I would consider one thing, though – if your company is so hard up that they are moved to even make that request of you, I would be nervous about their future. If I really needed that job, I might consider their request, if it would help my company’s apparently shaky bottom line, and put me in the good graces of the management – but, of course, only if it wasn’t too much of a financial burden.
Look at your last couple years – add up your insurance premiums, and then add up how much you would have had out-of-pocket had you NOT had the secondary insurance. If the two figures are fairly close, I would consider it. (And if the premiums are showing to be regularly MORE than what you’d have been paying in copays and deductible through your wife’s insurance, I’d do it in a heartbeat)
Ask a coworker what the gain is for any of the employees to opt out of the employer’s plan. Some people study their benefit packages to the point of being more concerned with the package than their job. I see no purpose in debating the point with your employer. Ask a trusted friend who works with you.
I am assuming that you don’t have kids, since you don’t mention them. As you are both employees, you each have the right to be covered as individual employees, which is often times cheaper for a married couple, since the employer usually covers most of the cost of an employee. If, instead, one of you covered the other as a spouse, your employee contributions to the plan would likely go up and you would receive the same coverage. Most employers structure their employee contributions this way, since they are trying to give a uniform benefit to their employees.
Both you and your wife work there, so both of you are entitled to receive benefits, just like everybody else in the plan! Next time you are asked, why don’t you just ask the questioner why he or she doesn’t take one for the team and give up some of the benefits that they are entitled to. Or better yet, ask them to take a cut in pay, since that is essentially what they are asking YOU to do. That will probably shut them up.
Likely, your wife’s insurance will cost more, if you have insurance avaliable through your work, and don’t take it.
Sure they can harass you.
it probably would NOT save him much – 2 single coverage policies are about $650 total – an employee and spouse policy is probably at least $550, maybe more
Sure they can ask AND they can change their policy about offering insurance to employees that already have it.
You ARE indeed wasting your company’s money, so they have every right to ask.