The below post is taken from the Video Blog, the Subject Matter Minute. If it’s a little hard to read, it’s because it’s taken from the spoken word. You can view the episode on YouTube if you would like. Find it here: Episode #42 – Ambulance Insurance.
If YouTube is blocked for you or your agency, you can scroll to the bottom of this post to view it from Google Drive. (I would prefer you view on YouTube, so I know how many people have watched)
You can also listen to an audio version.
Hello and welcome to another episode of the Subject Matter Minute. I truly appreciate you guys. Sorry this episode’s a bit late or later in the month than usual, but to be honest I wanted to make sure we still had a functioning government in this country after the election. I’m only half kidding.
Two out of the three last episodes have been good news. The other was on leave… so just news, right? I told you about our access to LinkedIn learning, which I truly hope all of you are taking advantage of, and then I covered our new employee assistance program, which also I hope you’re taking advantage of… especially during this pandemic and the crazy election. Today I got some more decent news. Now we’re being offered an inexpensive ambulance insurance plan.
I thought of something I should probably mention here. Kind of sounds like the state is spending more money on these programs. I’m happy to say that that is not true the LinkedIn learning was acquired through the library through a federal covid grant, and the employee assistance program was previously being purchased by several agencies, and we consolidated it and now we’re breaking even on that. The ambulance insurance is optional insurance that we have to pay for. I just wanted to get that out there considering the current financial situation of the state.
If you recall I did an episode not too long ago about air ambulance coverage for us. It was episode 34. Check it out if you want. My conclusion towards the end of the show was that state of Wyoming employees don’t really have to worry too much about getting hit with a high bill. However, it is possible that we could. Besides the costs going up in the industry, every company charges different rates. So here’s the deal… first of all, all ambulance service in the state is out of network. That means that Cigna pays 75 percent after your deductible, up to your out-of-pocket maximum of 2000, and any non-covered amounts. That means that we have to pay our deductible and up to $2000, plus anything that is determined to be over the maximum allowable charge or not covered. These are the unknowns. This is called balance billing in case you’ve heard that term thrown around.
Here’s the other thing… any ambulance ride needs to be deemed “medically necessary” by Cigna, and this is not guaranteed. And of course we have no say whether or not we’re placed on an ambulance when we’re injured… we may not even be conscious. So, if it’s deemed not medically necessary by cigna, you get stuck with the entire bill.
I’m not trying to scare you. I’m not trying to scare everybody… I’m just talking about the possibilities, okay?
So currently one out of ten Wyoming citizens, not just Wyoming state employees but Wyoming citizens, will need a ground or air ambulance ride every year. It’s the large distances between towns that kind of put us above average for this need.
Okay let’s talk about this new ambulance insurance. First of all, it’s only $19 a month for you and your family. This insurance, through a company called MASA, covers everything that your insurance doesn’t, including your deductible. It covers you, your spouse, and any dependent children up to the age of 26. It covers you anywhere in the US and Canada. Finally, the insurance will cover any ambulance ride that your insurance, or Cigna at this point, deems medically unnecessary after the fact.
This insurance is being offered through Employees’ Group Insurance, which means that you can sign up through the portal. Also, we are currently in the open enrollment period (when this video aired) so you can sign up right now, and you can ONLY sign up during the open enrollment period. I’ll remind everyone how to do that right now…
You can either go directly to egiportal.wyo.gov or you can also find it on the A&I website by going to the home page, going to employees group insurance, scrolling down to “benefit portal” where you will find a couple of videos about how to do stuff… but if you’ve already done stuff, click on employee portal access and that’ll open it up. That’ll bring you into your dashboard. Here you can see ambulance is a tab now. Go ahead and click on “modify benefits” and that’ll bring you to this page where you again have to click over here, on the right, modify benefits.
That will bring you to the change enrollment page where you need to come down here to this drop-down, and select open enrollment because I’m showing you how to do it during open enrollment. Otherwise, you would have to have a qualifying event, but that’s a whole other topic.
Open enrollment… click next. Now what it’s doing is taking you through all these tabs up here on the top. If you need to change things in different areas you can just keep going through these tabs, but for this purpose, I’m going to go straight to ambulance. You have a drop-down here that says decline drop or employee or family. Let’s select family. Then you have to check this box, because you’re going to be doing it for one year, then click next and that takes you to the next tab which is disability.
What I’m going to do is go to the next thing you would have to do if you were only doing ambulance coverage. You need to go to dependents. That brings you to the page where your dependents are listed. You can see right here that Little Wayne says “no” under ambulance. You need to go to edit so your dependents come into this page, and click ‘cover dependent on ambulance plan.’
Now you can see that Little Wayne has the ambulance coverage. So once you do the ambulance tab and the dependents tab, if you have dependents, if you’ve chosen family, then you can go to next. That will bring you to the summary which shows you all the stuff. Then you click this… you accept all this red stuff, and then you click submit.
That’s the new ambulance insurance offered by the state. I think our family is going to do it just for that peace of mind aspect. You know your medical bills are going to be pretty high if you’re getting an ambulance ride or especially an air ambulance ride, so at least this shaves off the cost of the actual ride.
That’s it for today! You guys have a great month, and I’ll see you next time.