Benefits – Page 4 – Subject Matter Minute Blog

Subject Matter Minute, Episode #18 – Long Term Care Insurance

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 #18 -Long Term Care 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 in YouTube, so I know how many people have watched)

You can also listen to an audio version.

Hello fellow state of Wyoming employees, thanks for joining me on another episode of the SMM, I’m Matt Nagy. A couple of you may have noticed… it’s unlikely… but I skipped the last episode of the subject matter minute because I was burning vacation in July. It was great, and it was really hard to get back to work, but basically, I got a river trip in, I had a staycation, which was actually supposed to be a supported mountain bike trip, but due to fires in Colorado, it got cancelled… but I stayed home anyways, that was a blast. Then we went to Walla Walla for a long vacation… Walla Walla Washington to do some wine drinking, or tasting. It’s kind of more my wife’s gig, but we had a lot of fun… we had good friends with us. So so in the end I didn’t feel like I had enough time to get her done, so I took a month off. If you were waiting with bated breath, I hope you took a breath, and I’m very sorry.

I want to thank the subject matter expert for that last one, which was EGI who gave me the information for telehealth. I think that a lot of you found that information useful. I got several comments about people not knowing about it, and basically, it’s a pretty inexpensive way to get a doctor’s opinion. So thank you EGI.

On that note, this month’s subject matter expert is once again EGI. We’re burning through all their benefits. This one’s loosely a benefit because it’s a voluntary benefit, which means it puts it in the same area as vision and long and short term disability in that the state doesn’t actually kick anything in. So it’s a benefit still because we’re getting group rates because of our numbers.

This episode we’re going to be talking about long-term care insurance.

Long-term care insurance… what is it? Basically, it is insurance to provide money for custodial care if you’re in an accident or get some sort of long-term disease like cancer… it’ll help pay for custodial things such as bathing, cooking, feeding, dressing… you know? If you get to that point, you forget about those, and those aren’t covered by medical insurance because they’re not actually medical items.

So that’s the what… why would you want to do it? First of all, it can help protect your retirement income. I say “help” because these sorts of scenarios can get very expensive. It can also help protect your family and friends from the burdens of continual care. It can help you choose where you want to get your care … it can be at home or in a facility or a combination. And that leads to the next one which is it allows you to bring someone into your home for care.

We need to keep in mind… when you think about long-term care – if you’ve thought about long-term care – we think about that being for the elderly or for when you’re really old. That’s not necessarily the case. If you have an accident or you get a disease like cancer, this coverage can kick in way before your old age.

Like I said, many people think that health insurance will help pay for this sort of stuff… it does not. Health insurance covers medical items only. This helps with custodial things… day-to-day activities. Another thing people think is that the government will kick in for this sort of thing. Well apparently that’s true, but you have to basically use all of your retirement savings, and sell off all your assets before the government will truly kick in. Some people think that they’re gonna have enough retirement to do this. Some people might, but it can get very expensive. I’m gonna go to their website and show you some stuff… the numbers are huge… you’ll be surprised.

For instance, my grandma… over ten years ago was put into – it was either assisted living or a nursing home or a combination place – that cost six thousand dollars a month, and this was a long time ago. It drove my grandpa crazy because it was destroying his retirement savings.

I kind of see this as a an insurance for the middle… all of us in the middle. If you’re broke when this happens to you you’ll probably get some help. If you’re really wealthy, you’ll probably be able to cover it. But if you’re in the middle, like most of us, this could help.

Their website is very useful… it has all these questions that I answered already, but you can read read through them again, and it also has a way to find out what your monthly cost will be. And because there’s lots of variables, you can change how much you get per day, you can change the overall amount, you can make it go up by a percentage every year to kind of keep up with inflation… so I’ll stop there and I’ll just go straight to the website and show you what you can do.

Because this is a voluntary benefit, a different company puts it on… this company is Genworth. so you go to Genworth.com/groupltc. The user is statewy password is groupltc, then you select your state, and then you select the applicant type, so I’m doing an employee as opposed to spouse. Then you click get started.

This has a bunch of information that you should read before deciding.

Why consider long-term insurance?
What does it cover?
Some misconceptions?
Why consider this program?

And then it goes over the Genworth the company. Whether or not it’s a good company, how long it’s been doing business…

Then you can look at questions regarding the plans:

How do I choose my coverage?
What features are included?
What additional options?
What happens when I need it?
What is not covered?

Definitely read through it all.

They also have a section about how to apply. Now I’m gonna go in to get a quote… I’m gonna go through this real quick. I’m gonna say it’s just me… you would say yes if it’s a spouse. Then you put in your birth date, where you are gonna retire… I’m gonna say rest of state, cuz probably not Casper or Cheyenne, and then click “next step.”

This is where you can adjust things to change your monthly fee. Right now it’s $56.09, and that means I’m gonna get out a maximum of a $150 a day for care, and a maximum (complete maximum) of $164,250. You can adjust… you can say, “how about if I just want hundred dollars a day?” That changes it to $37 a month. Or maybe let’s just go clear up to the two hundred dollars a day… now it not only adjusts the the daily but it adjusts the total coverage, so that’s $219,000 total. Alright, you really want to see it jump up let’s go to the max. $85 a month… not terrible, but if I want this amount to increase by a certain amount every year to keep up with inflation – let’s just do the three percent – jumps up to $189 a month. But, your total will increase yearly for life. At five percent, the highest you can do, it is $315.22 for my birth date.

Now there’s some things here that you need to look at. Let’s calculate the cost of waiting… that means if I were to do this plan in five years it would cost me $360 for a month, in ten years it will cost me 438. That’s a nice comparison as far as should I wait or should I start this now.

The other thing is here calculating self-insuring options. So this is how long it would take me to save that amount of money at 6%. I’ll be 78 years old by the time I have $292,000. now if you do it that way you should realize you won’t have it till your that age, and you hope that your problems start after that. With the coverage, you can get payouts earlier if things were to happen earlier.

Also you can compare plans and you can print out a plan summary.

One thing I want to show you that I had to back up to the Learning Center… I want to show you the cost of care in your area. So, this is a way to see how much it costs right now to get this sort of care. If you go to your state, and let’s do annually, and let’s say cheyenne, because a lot of you are in cheyenne. So this is how much it costs annually in Cheyenne right now for these sorts of things. Right now for a Home Health Aide, it cost $51,000 a year. You’ve got to keep in mind, too, that these sorts things are going up by this much every year. So assisted living facility… $55,000, but it’s going up seven percent a year! Let’s say you need it in 20 years… it’s gonna be way more than this. And consider this private room in a nursing home… $101,000 now, going up at three percent.

As you can see, the website is very handy, has a ton of information, and allows you to look at some numbers.

I hope that helps with your decision-making process as far as long-term care goes. As with most things in this insurance world in this area the younger you get in the cheaper it is per month, so consider it.

That’s it for this episode! Thanks for joining me on the subject matter minute I’ll see you next time.

Subject Matter Minute, Episode #17 – Telehealth

You can also listen to an audio version.

Welcome to another Subject Matter Minute, I’m Matt Nagy… thanks for joining me.

So, I wasn’t sure how people would receive last month’s episode on mindfulness meditation, and while it was the first episode that I had a thumbs down, I think it also got the most thumbs up initially. So thanks and I hope some of you try it out.

Today I was gonna talk a little bit about the tornado that happened a couple of weeks ago in Laramie… it was a doozy, and it was amazing. But after losing a few hours of sleep last night, I thought I’d get a little more personal.

Now this gets a little long… I get a little chatty, so if you want to just find out about telehealth feel free to skip forward.

As you guys know, I have a couple teenagers, and I’m sure a lot of you out there have teenagers. We’ve given them a fairly late curfew and they’ve been pushing it by staying out every single night to their curfew, and we’re getting a little tired of never seeing them. I mean, I assume that’s normal of teens… So we made this little rule this summer where we wanted them to stay home two nights a week… not too big of a deal you’d think, but my older daughter was grousing about it yesterday, and then she was saying she was gonna go to bed, and she said good night, and and that’s extremely unusual because my wife and I go to bed fairly early. So I got suspicious. I set my alarm for midnight, and got up and went up checked on younger daughter… she was there. Looked in on the older daughter and it seemed like she was in bed, and I was like okay, great, started walking away, and then moments later I was like, wait a second, my younger daughter had fooled me before with pillows in the bed. I kid you not. So, I went back in there, and sure enough… I pulled the covers back and it was a bunch of pillows lined up in the bed!

I just texted her, said get your butt home, check in when you get home. I thought, they are teenagers, so I was trying not to be too worked up, since it was only midnight. She’s out to midnight all the time anyways. But, on the other hand, I couldn’t go to sleep.

She came home not too much longer, and I just said go to bed. I couldn’t go to sleep for like three hours… so it was one of those things where I’d try some music, I tried going to the TV room and watching some dumb TV,

but turns out it was new episodes of Parks and Rec or at least ones I hadn’t seen, and so that didn’t work. Finally I got back into bed and was able to sleep… so that’s an aside I guess, but dealing with teenagers, you know…

I got to say I snuck out a few times or several times when I was a kid, but it was a lot harder for me. We lived like five miles out of town and I had a quarter-mile driveway, so I couldn’t just drive out. I had to get picked up after walking down the field. My wife and I sleep in the basement, and we sleep hard, so they can just walk out the front door!

We’re pretty lenient parents, so you’d hope maybe that would mean that they could follow a couple rules… mm-hmm, ya know no matter what the rules are, they need more. So any comments down below to make me feel better would be great.

Enough about that that was long! Today I want to talk about something that I used once, and it’s a great health benefit… today we’re going to talk about telehealth.

[Music]

Before we get started on Telehealth, I want to thank Kimberly for the information for mindfulness meditation last month… thank you very much. I think it went over well, Kimberly.

This month’s subject matter expert is Ralph Hayes of EGI. He helped me out with some details that I was unsure of… thanks Ralph.

So Telehealth… what is it? It’s basically having a doctor’s appointment through your computer or through your mobile phone. It’s great for a lot of instances… so is it hard to get an appointment with your doctor or at least in a timely manner? Do you not want to go wait in the waiting room and then wait in the little room even longer, to get to talk to your doctor? Perhaps you’re on the road on vacation or for business, or it’s the middle of the night and you have something that you think isn’t an emergency, but you’d still like to talk to a doctor about?

This is what Telehealth is for… and to boot, it’s cheap! The cost for Telehealth is $42.

That’s one thing about Telehealth… you have to pay upfront. When you’re going through the process, you put your credit card in, but the $42 will go towards your deductible, and if your deductible is met, it’s a 75% coinsurance. That means that of the $42, they’ll pay 75%… you’re only going to pay 25%. You’re gonna pay $10.50 for a doctor’s appointment!

Now obviously this is Telehealth… if you have a giant gash across your chest or your your arm’s hanging at a 90-degree angle, you don’t go to Telehealth. You go to the emergency room or somewhere else. But for all those little things that you sometimes maybe don’t go to the doctor for, but maybe you should… the colds, the rashes, the ear infections, those kinds of things… this is perfect for it, and $10.50! Right?

I mentioned there’s two ways you can do this… on your computer or on your mobile device. There’s two providers that work with Cigna, and they’re called MDLive for Cigna, and Amwell for Cigna. The best way to do it on the computer is to log into your Cigna, and then go through there, which I’ll show you in a little bit. You can also use the mobile apps. If you get the mobile apps you need to make sure that they say “for Cigna.” So, “MDLive for Cigna” or “Amwell for Cigna,” because that’s where you’ll get your price difference. There may be some other apps out there that they use, so it needs to say “for Cigna.”

I’m gonna go ahead and show you how to do it… at least how to get there on your computer, and how to get there on your mobile device. I can’t go all the way through it because I don’t want to talk to a doctor today, but I can least get you started. And like I said, I’ve done it before… I had a little rash on my leg that was there for, I don’t know, nine months? Finally, I decided to try this Telehealth thing out. Sure enough, logged in it was really easy… talked to a doctor, he prescribed some ointment, took care of it in two weeks… I was thrilled. It was very easy.

Let’s do this on a computer first. First of all, just go to myCigna.com and login. There are two providers, like I mentioned, and I’ve already used one of them so you’ll see there’s a difference if you’ve used them before or if you haven’t.

Navigate to “Cigna Telehealth Connection”

Go to “find providers and costs,” go down to “Cigna Telehealth connection,” and here are the two providers. Here’s a nice feature too… you could also talk to a nurse first for free to see what they think, see if you should move on to a doc. I’ve used Amwell before, so I’m gonna show you one that you haven’t used.

The two choices and a phone number to call a nurse for free

Click “get started”… make sure you have pop up blockers off, because it does open a new window.

It takes you to MDLive for Cigna. You have to activate your account, then choose a doctor, then resolve your issue. Let’s activate an account.

Fill out this information in order to activate your account

This is the kind of stuff you’re going have to fill out… have your signature ID number ready, and then after this (I am assuming, since it’s been a little while since I did it) you’d have to fill out your credit card information.

So this is what you would do if you have not used it before. Now let’s go back and do one that has been used before. Click ‘get started.’ Now typically, even if you’ve used it before, it’ll have you put in your phone number twice and then take you to this screen.

After logging in, this is what you see for Amwell for Cigna

So if you used it before, you’ll get here and you’ll see that you can get started with the first available provider or you can weed through the doctors and read their bios and decide on one. During the day there are a lot of them. I did mine in the evening and there was fewer available, and I did hear of an instance from somebody where there wasn’t someone available on one provider so they went to the other provider to find somebody. So that might be one reason you have to switch.

That’s how you get into it and start the process on your computer. Now let’s go through the process on your mobile device. I can only show you on an iPhone, because that’s what I own, but I’m sure it’s the same on other devices. First of all, you’ll need to download the app or the apps. I go to the App Store and I search for it, and I found MDLive for Cigna here and then let’s go back and search for Amwell for Cigna as well.

This is what the apps look like in the app store on an iPhone

So I would tap ‘get’… you download both to your phone. Once you have them on your phone you can go ahead and click on MDLive here. When you use MDLive or Amwell for the first time, you’ll have a screen like this where you can either log in or sign up.

I’m going to click ‘sign up’ on the bottom and then it takes you to a screen just like the website, where you can ‘activate now.’

Click “Activate Now” and then fill in your information

We’re gonna click on that… same stuff as on the website… you’ll need your customer ID, and you fill that out and create an account. I’m not going do that right now, but then next time you just use your username and password to log in.

That’s another episode of the Subject Matter Minute! Thanks for joining me… hopefully you guys can get out there and use this Telehealth for those minor things. I think it’s a great benefit and I think it saves everybody money. I’ll see you next time.

Subject Matter Minute, Episode #16 – Mindfulness Meditation

You can also listen to an audio version.

Welcome to another Subject Matter Minute, I’m Matt Nagy, thanks for tuning in! Before I get started, I want to thank last month’s subject matter expert which, of course, was EGI, or employees’ group insurance. They deal with a ton of stuff down there, so they are often my subject matter expert.

First of all I want to chat a little bit about something that I like to do. I’m a bit of a do-it-yourselfer. I find it hard to pay somebody for something that I’m pretty certain I could do myself. I’ve done a little bit of everything, you know, I’ve roofed houses, I’ve replaced window,s I’ve tiled floors, I’ve even gutted and remodeled kitchens and bathrooms. Now, I wouldn’t say anything I do is amazing, but I can tell you it’s way better than what I tore out! And we’ve always been happy with it… so there’s that. It’s kind of funny because my wife always asks me, “how do you even know how to do that?” I tell her, “Well I guess first of all, a lot of it’s common sense, but most the time I just read the instructions!” It’s amazing what you can get done by reading the instructions. Of course nowadays YouTube makes it a hell of a lot easier.

Lately I’ve kind of lost some of my enthusiasm for these types of projects, and you know, there’s probably a lot of reasons, but the main reason I think is that I got a lot going on. I got a couple teenage daughters, got a lot of work, a lot of side work, just plain busy… a lot of things going on in the brain. So what I can’t do, is what I used to be able to do, and that’s focus on the task at hand. You know? I would just be sanding the wood and not thinking about getting it done. Well nowadays… like, I just did a bathroom down here in the basement, and I was constantly thinking about when I could get it done so I could move on to the next thing. So I wasn’t enjoying the job at all. That leads me to the topic of this month. I think this is the first one that actually led into a topic. I think the rest was just information about myself that really didn’t matter, but this one leads into the topic at hand. It’s not a benefit or a process, but it’s about wellness, and wellness is a really good thing for anybody at work and in life. And actually a lot of agencies, or some agencies, actually have wellness programs that will promote wellness and reward employees for healthy behaviors.

So what I’m talking about today is mindfulness meditation.

I know, I know… some of you are thinking I’m getting a little hippie dippie here, but I’ll tell you what… the hippies back in the 60s that we’re meditating were onto something.

Now before I go on I want to thank Kimberly Fields who is my subject matter expert this episode. She’s actually been going to trainings and weekend retreats and knows a lot about it. Thanks Kimberly!

So what is mindfulness meditation? It’s simple in concept. Really it’s just being aware of the present… generally by focusing on your breath. It’s when we start thinking about the past, dredging up the past, and thinking about the future, that we get anxiety and worried. And this is really a way to bring those feelings down.

I was talking about the hippies a minute ago. The reason I say they were onto something is that the science is starting to bear this out. There’s been multiple studies that are starting to prove that this is very good for your brain, and not only just good for your well-being but physically good for your brain. There was just a study in 2015 by a UCLA that showed that mindfulness meditation preserves the amount of gray matter in your brain as well as shrinking the amygdala. So I’m getting all science-y on you here, but the amygdala is the fight-or-flight part of your brain that was created to keep you alive when predators were after you… which we don’t need so much anymore. In fact, that’s what really causes worry and stress. It’s shown that meditation actually shrinks that, which of course is going to shrink those sorts of feelings. So physical changes in your brain from meditating!

When we’re talking about mindfulness meditation, or mindfulness in general, it can be a wide range of things. All the way down here where you’re somewhat like Kimberly… you’re taking courses and you’re doing a daily practice of, like an hour of actual meditation, or it can be all the way down to kind of where I am, which is simply having an app reminding me to breathe. I’m sure a lot of you are like me and that you sit at a computer all day, and I’ve found… well you don’t notice until you actually stop and take the breaths… but I found that when I’m working at my computer I don’t breathe well. It’s shallow breathing. Sometimes I find myself grinding my teeth. Well, what this does is reminds me every once in a while to just breathe. So what I do is I take a few deep breaths and actually focus on the breath… stop thinking about everything else. So anyways, it can go from an hour of meditation a day clear down to just simply that.

There are a ton of things in between… small things you can do to help your peace of mind and your brain, for that matter. If you’re not interested in creating a formal practice, where you’re meditating for a certain amount of time every day, I’ve put a link to an article down below that gives you ten ways that you can incorporate mindfulness into your life and into your job. This is specifically about your job. So give that a read. Some of the things are single tasking, which is kind of like I was talking about with my remodels … basically you’re focusing on the task at hand when you’re single tasking. And that’s good for you. Another one was setting reminders like I do. You can set reminders or you can have something that reminds you. Like each time your phone rings you pause before you answer it, take some deep breaths. Another one is simply accepting things that that you can’t change.

There’s 10 in that article and then if you’re interested in more information there’s another article down below that is “14 ways to practice mindfulness” that are compiled from other articles, because there’s a lot of people talking about this right now. That includes Business Insider, Harvard Business Review, Fitness Magazine, etc. So if you want more information go ahead and check that out.

If you are practicing mindfulness or meditating, and you know about this, I would love it if you would comment down below and tell me where you’re at in your practice, or if it’s helped you, and what you think about it. I can tell you right now that I am an occasional meditator. When I first got this app, I probably did like 8 days in a row, and then I just started fading and doing it occasionally. We’re only talking like 10-minute meditations. I really need to get back into it. And then, of course, the other thing I do is have the app remind me to breathe. So that’s where I’m at.

Some of you may really think this is very hippie, but I tell you, the science bears it out, and you should read up on it. I really do think that this sort of thing can help you on your job and in life and I plan on doing better.

Well thanks for joining me on the Subject Matter Minute, thanks Kimberly for the information, and I’ll see you all next time!

Subject Matter Minute, Episode #15 – Wyoming Health Fair Screenings

You can also listen to an audio version.

Hello and welcome to another subject matter minute, I’m Matt Nagy, thanks for joining me. Typically at the beginning, as you know, I usually tell you something about myself, so we can get to know each other better. But I really don’t have anything today. Later in the show you’re gonna see some very personal information, but if I’m not worried about it, don’t you worry about it. You’ll find out in a bit.

There is one of thing I wanted to talk about briefly… there’s a ton of really cool state employees out there, you guys all rock. However, I’ve run into a lot of people who act like they know me, and I think that it’s from the show. They say, “hey Matt,” and I’m like, “hey… you.” Hopefully it’s from the show, because I didn’t remember their name!

Now, if you do know me from the show, and you want to say hi, please do! I love to chat, and it’s kind of fun to be recognized, I guess… but remember I might not know you. It’s a little less awkward for me if you just say, “hey, I know you from your show,” or something like that.

Alright let’s get right to the topic today. Today we’re gonna talk about the Wyoming health fair.

[Music]

Let’s talk about the Wyoming health fair. Before we do, I want to thank EGI, who naturally is my subject matter expert for this topic. I want to thank the folks there for helping me out. The primary focus of the Wyoming health fair is to get folks in to get blood screenings and flu shots, and they do this for free. Really the state of Wyoming, or specifically EGI, pays for these two things. You can get two CBC blood panel screenings a year and a flu shot.

Voice over:

Well… looks like I forgot something here. These screenings are only available to state employees and their dependents who are currently covered by the state health insurance.

The Wyoming health fair does have some permanent locations in a few

towns. I think Laramie, Cheyenne and a couple others have office hours so you can go do this at any time, or at least when they’re open. I think it’s Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday here in town, but even if you don’t have a permanent location you can look at the schedule see when they’re gonna be close by or in your town and go get it done.

So they have these free things that they do for you, but they also have a list of other tests that can be done on your blood. Down below there’s a link to a sheet that I print it out, marked up, and scanned back in. I marked next to each one a P or an M. If a test has a P next to it it’s preventive, and if you get it done, you have to pay for it up front at Wyoming health fair, but then you can submit it to Cigna and they will reimburse you at a hundred percent. If it’s got an M next to it, that means it’s medical but you can still submit it

to Cigna, but it’ll go either towards your deductible, or if your deductibles met, they’ll pay the 85% copay.

Voice Over:

Wow! I’m on a roll. I got two things wrong here. First of all, Wyoming health fairs isn’t a participating provider. Therefore, Cigna would only pay 80%. Also, it’s not a copay, its coinsurance… so Cigna would pay the 80% coinsurance. It’s just wording, but it’s important.

Next, I want to go to their website because it’s got a lot of good information, and it’s also got a login where you can track your results. Wyoming Health Fairs is just wyominghealthfairs.com… simple. Here’s their homepage.

Wyoming Health Fairs homepage

There’s a lot of information on their site. For instance, you can look at the test descriptions, in case you’re wondering what that even means. There’s also a calendar to show you when the events are happening near you or in your town. Then there’s “my results” which I’m gonna show you in just a minute.

Wyoming health fairs state of wyoming section

First of all, I’m going to take you to the Wyoming, or the state of Wyoming, page, which you can go to under corporate… to state of Wyoming. This shows you just a little bit of specific information to us at the state of Wyoming. It shows you here the things that are covered by the state of Wyoming… every year two chemistry profiles, flu shot, blood pressure and body fat analysis. When you go, the folks at Wyoming health fairs are probably going to be able to help you out with the claim form, if you do some of the other things that aren’t covered for free, otherwise you can download the claim form right here.

Now let’s go to the results part… this is the coolest part of course. If you haven’t created an account, you’re going to need a receipt from your most recent blood draw, your date of birth, and a valid email address to create your account. If you’ve created one, you log in right here.

This is my results page. As you can see I’ve got four tests in here. I haven’t done it nearly enough, but I’m starting to do it. I did it twice a year last year. So you can see all your stuff. As I mentioned, I kind of had high cholesterol. It was usually two twenty or so, or over two hundred. I made my diet change and it dropped to 182. The biggest deal for me was the bad cholesterol, that was 130, and 123, and I dropped 40% to 83. That was great. So this is really cool, and that you can see the change, or just monitor where you’re at.

You can also click here the show only abnormal, which will show just the stuff in the red. Or you can see it all. So, a very handy website… very useful tests. At least get your free stuff done and check out your results on their website. Alright, I hope you guys found this useful… now get out there and use this great benefit. I want to mention, please, if you see me out there, do say hi. I love meeting all of you. Thanks for joining me on this month’s subject matter minute, I’ll see you next month!

Subject Matter Minute, Episode #13 – Dental Insurance

You can also listen to an audio version.

Welcome to another subject matter minute I’m Matt Nagy, thanks for joining me.

You might notice something different about me today… I’m sure you do if you’ve been watching. I had to ditch the glasses. The professional in me couldn’t take the glare anymore. I’m sure most of you noticed, I certainly did… I had to kind of tilt my head a little bit down in order to lose it and I’d forget, and that’s awkward. I’ve got to keep the lights… you got to have good light for decent video, so I had to ditch the glasses. Hopefully I don’t look too weird. I can see… I have like 20/30 in one eye on 20/25 and the other, so it’s kind of mostly for computer screens and driving. Although I’m completely used to them now, so everything’s a little fuzzy. Not a big deal.

Today’s topic is rather near and dear to my heart. My wife of 22 years has been a dental hygienist for 23 years, so this topic comes up around the table, around the house, all the time. Today I’m going to talk about our dental insurance.

So dental insurance. Before I go into it, I just want to say that last month’s subject, while there really wasn’t a subject matter expert, I did use the information that A&I, HRD put together on the website. I did the research, so I guess, in essence, I was the subject matter expert, but thanks to HRD for putting together the information. This month, again, I’m doing the research, but I want to give a shout out to Karen Williams of EGI, because I got a lot of the information from her trainings.

So our dental coverage… first of all it’s by Delta Dental, as you probably know, and there’s basically two packages you can get. You can get preventive dental and you can get optional dental. Preventative is required if you have state health insurance, so you have to have it. If you have the health insurance, you have it. Also, you have to have the preventative to get the optional. Another thing is you don’t have to have the insurance to get these packages. If you, for some reason don’t have the state of Wyoming health insurance… if your spouse has better insurance, which I’d be surprised, but maybe that’s case, you can still buy these packages.

One thing to keep in mind when you’re a new employee… if you don’t buy these in the first 31 days there’s gonna be a waiting period. For preventative, it’s just a waiting period till the next open enrollment period, which could be up to a year, but it could be a month depending on when you’ve been hired. The optional dental, which covers more intensive things, we’ll go into that, has a three year waiting period. So if you don’t sign up within that first 31 days you’re gonna have to wait three years before you sign up.

VOICE OVER TO CLARIFY:

“Hold up… actually this waiting period could be longer than three years because you have to do it during open enrollment. So let’s say you’re hired in June… you have to do it during open enrollment of that year so it would actually be about three and a half years.”

That also comes into play if you cancel it. If you have it for a while, drop it, you’re gonna have to wait three years before you can sign back up. Now there are a couple instances where you don’t have to do the three year waiting period. It’s in the Delta Dental book, feel free to check it out.

Let’s talk about what these two things cover. Preventative covers two cleanings and exams a year. It also covers bitewing x-ray once a year, and then a full mouth x-ray every two years. There’s also a few things for kids up to age 18… it covers sealants and the topical fluoride and spacers. I’m not sure what spacers are, but those are covered as well in the preventive. There’s no deductible and it covers 100%.

Now the optional… the optional is for more intensive things, and there is a deductible. There’s a $50 deductible per person or $100 deductible per family, per year. After your deductible is covered, there’s two levels… there’s what they call basic services and major services. The basic services is covered at 80 percent, and then the major services is covered at 50 percent.

Something to keep in mind with the optional dental is there is a $1,500 per year, per person maximum. So if you have $10,000 treatment plan on your messed up mouth, you’re only going to get $1,500 out of this optional plan.

I’m not gonna go into what is in the basic plan and what’s in the major plan. You can find that information down below. I actually copied that section out and put it down there verbatim.

There’s something else to know with our dental coverage… you need to, or you don’t have to, but you need to try to, find somebody in network. There’s two different networks. There’s the premier… dentists who have agreed to accept what Delta pays so you don’t have to pay any extra. There’s also the PPO (preferred provider organization). The deal with them is they’ve agreed to lower their prices so your out-of-pocket is less. They may charge more than Delta pays so you’re gonna pay a little bit out-of-pocket but it’s reasonable.

You don’t have to go with an in-network dentist, but the deal with that is that if you go to an out-of network dentist, Delta will pay at a lesser rate. Also, they don’t have to submit your stuff, so basically in the end you’re gonna probably have to submit your insurance claim to Delta and they’re gonna pay you directly, but at a lower rate. So, really, you should find an in network dentist. There’s plenty of them in Wyoming.

VOICE OVER TO CLARIFY:

“Okay, I may have gotten into the weeds just a little bit too much there. After talking to the folks at EGI, really it boils down to a participating provider or a non participating provider… find yourself somebody who participates.”

After having read through the Delta book, which again is linked down below, I’m gonna have to say that you shouldn’t assume that something’s covered. There’s a lot of exclusions, a lot of fine print, so make sure you go read up before you maybe opt into the optional. Just make sure you’re covered, and you know. Some major things might be covered by health insurance, so you might need to do a little bit of research. Feel free to read through that Delta Dental book. It’s not bad until it gets to the exclusions and the long list of stuff at the bottom, but it’s probably a good idea to check it out.

I think that’s it for today. Thanks for joining me on the Subject Matter Minute! Hope to see you next time, and don’t forget to subscribe!

Subject Matter Minute, Episode #12 – The Full Benefit Package

You can also listen to an audio version.

Hello and welcome to another episode of the subject matter minute. I’m Matt Nagy, thanks for joining me! If you didn’t tune in last month, the subject was the 457 deferred compensation plan, which is basically a retirement plan that is kind of on the side of our normal pension. I got the information from Polly Scott from the Wyoming retirement system, and in the end, the bottom line is the state will match twenty dollars with twenty dollars. So get in there with twenty dollars so you get an extra free $20.

Before we get started with this month’s subject or topic I want to talk a little bit more about me… I guess. One of the things I used to do as a youth a lot, and actually it probably continued on well past my youth, or at least past college, is I played a lot of hacky sack. I don’t know if any of you guys did it… seemed big, at least in Lander. In Lander it was quite big. It seemed like at least all the dudes played hacky sack. Every once in a while you get a girl in the loop, but it was mostly a bunch of dudes. We played it a lot. In fact it was kind of weird, and seemed like in high school and college summers at least, we played it a ton, and I was wondering where we got all that time. I guess maybe we just did it whenever we had free time. We were all very good and we would do tricks and stuff, and we could keep it going for a long time. On my peak, playing by myself, I actually got 300 consecutive kicks. That would be bragging except for I really don’t think anyone cares about hacky sack anymore, so take it for what it is. I was proud of it, it was fun, got some good exercise out of it. Except for the three dudes I see in the park on Sunday morning… old hippie guys… I don’t see anybody playing hacky sack. I don’t know why. It’s a lot of fun, keeps you flexible, and I’m not sure why it died out.

The topic for today is probably something I should have gone over in the very first episode seeing as most of these, or a lot of these, have been about benefits that we get. Today I’m going to cover full-time employees benefit package.

Let’s talk about our general benefit package.. the thing that kind of made you truly decide to take the job. Right? Typically, the job pay is a little bit lower but the benefit package is amazing. First of all, you can find all of this on the A&I website. I gotta say that hopefully within about four months the website is going to be different because we are redesigning it right now, but right now it’s in this spot:

http://ai-hrd.wyo.gov/human-resources-division/employee-resources/benefits

It’s funny because the first thing they have listed on there is wages. I don’t
think we consider that a benefit so much as a standard. I mean, we better get paid! So we’re gonna skip that. In my opinion, the top two benefits we get as state employees are the healthcare and the annual leave, or the vacation days. Obviously, the health care is huge. I’m gonna go into that a little bit later. The list starts with vacation leave, so I’m gonna start with that.

You accrue more and more hours the longer you are with the state. So when you’re a new employee, up to four years, you get eight hours a day. That’s twelve days per year, which isn’t bad by itself, but then you tack on the nine days of holidays, and you’re getting, let’s see… let’s do math… 21 days a year of vacation, that’s pretty awesome. That’s just when you start off. If you happen to hang with the state for 19 years you will be making 16 hours per month. I know it’s kind of crazy to think of 19 years, but from my experience there are a ton of you out there who have worked here longer than that, so congratulations you’re making 16 hours per month. That puts you at 24 days per year plus your nine vacation days, so you got a little bit of work/life balance hopefully. Depending on how long you’ve worked for the state you can only accrue so many vacation days before you begin to lose it. Look in the personnel rules, chapter six, if you need more information on that.

I mentioned holidays. We get at least nine paid holidays per year. You can click on that link on the website to see what they are.

The next thing is sick leave. Same deal… that’s in the personnel rules chapter six. You get eight hours a month of sick leave. It never goes up, you always get eight hours. But, it also has unlimited accumulation, so you can accumulate that for hundreds if not a thousand or more hours. There are details when you retire and how much you can cash out, or if you can, but I’m not going to go into that. You can look in personnel rules chapter six to see. The bottom line is you get eight per month and you can use it for things like when your kids are sick, or when you’re sick obviously, or doctor’s appointments. Really nice benefit of course.

The next one is retirement. I’m definitely not going to go into the details of that because the details are complicated, but the bottom line is it’s a pension. So what that means is that after a certain amount of employment, which with the state is four years, you become vested. That means that when you reach retirement age… whatever the state of Wyoming considers the amount of years you worked plus your age to be a retirement age… when you reach that, you will get paid for the rest of your life a percentage of your best years as an employee. So your top three or your top five years pay averaged… you’ll get a percentage of that. That’s a pension. That’s what we get. Not many places give pensions anymore, so that’s a huge benefit, I believe.

The next one we talked about last episode on Episode 11 – Deferred Compensation. That’s just another retirement plan that you can use. This is not really a benefit except they will match twenty dollars. Like I mentioned earlier, get twenty dollars going in there so you can get that twenty dollars.

The next one is health insurance. This is a big one. Sometimes I hear grumblings about our coverage or how much it costs, and I just can’t believe it… kind of blows my mind. I was in the private market for years and basically what we would do is we would stick with a company until it got outrageous, and then we would switch companies. This, of course, only works if you don’t have a pre existing condition, so you can only play that game for so long. It’s really expensive out there, and ours is inexpensive. It depends on your deductible, but it you know the standard rules apply… you have certain deductibles, you pay more – you pay less. In my opinion, this is a really good benefit.

The next one on their list is life insurance. This one I don’t consider a benefit because they’re not paying for it at all. You can get reasonably priced life insurance through them, but again, you have to pay for it, so we’re gonna skip that one.

The next one is dental coverage. Now dental coverage you got to pay for as well, however, if you have health insurance, which I don’t know why you wouldn’t, through the state, you have to have the preventive dental. So it’s added on. You pay a little bit for it, and it’s not bad, but that gives you the preventive coverage. You also have the option of getting optional coverage, which would cover things like crowns and things like that, but that’s an add-on… not really a benefit.

The next thing is the flexible spending accounts. We covered that one in episode 6 and 7, if you need more details. Basically, it allows you to take out money pre-tax… reduces your taxable income… to pay for health related things and day care. It’s a good benefit in that it reduces your taxable income.

The next one is longevity pay, which is truly a benefit, and is the whole reason I got into doing this subject matter minute. That was episode number one if you need details on it, but the bottom line is every 5 years you get an extra $40 per month to your pay. So at 5 years you get 40, 10 years you get 80, 15 years you get 120, and so on. That’s a true benefit. They just give you a little bit of extra money for sticking around.

Another benefit is the state is open to alternative work schedules. They list this as one of the benefits. It is if you you have a job where that can work. Right? Not everyone can do that, but if you are in a situation where that might work, talk to your supervisor.

Finally, there’s one more you can do… automatic payroll deposit. That’s something I do for sure. It’s handy. You get paid at 12:01 a.m. on the day of pay day, so you get it as early as you possibly can.

That’s just a general overview of what full-time employees get for their benefit package. It’s pretty sweet. Sometimes we get paid a little bit less because they consider these benefits to be pretty good pay, and you know what? Honestly, the health care is substantial pay. Blows my mind when I look at how much the state pays for my family for our health insurance. I believe it’s like $1,700 a month, and I pay like $300 That’s a big chunk of change every month going to somebody.

I hope that’s helpful! Again, you can find the links down below to any of this information and to the previous episodes that cover the individual items, and we’ll continue covering things. We will hit healthcare, will hit the retirement pension at some point, too. Thanks for hanging in there, and we’ll see you next time on the Subject Matter Minute

Subject Matter Minute, Episode # 11 – 457 Deferred Compensation Plan

If YouTube is blocked for you or your agency, you can scroll to the bottom of this post to view it from Google Drive.

You can also listen to an audio version.

Hey hey hey! Welcome to another episode of the Subject Matter Minute, I’m Matt Nagy, thanks for joining me.

I haven’t asked for a while, or maybe not as much as I used to, but I’d really like it if you folks would subscribe to my youtube channel. At the bottom of every video there’s a big red button that says “subscribe.” So go ahead and click that now. All of you guys have a YouTube channel now associated with your Gmail, so it’ll subscribe you, and if you go into YouTube you might see the stuff that I post along the side. It also gives me some numbers just in case somebody wants a report generated and wants to actually know how many people are actually watching me. So I’d really appreciate it.

Last month there was no subject matter expert, because I was the subject. If you didn’t watch, it was a blooper reel. It seemed to go over pretty well considering it had the most views of any of my videos! Thanks for laughing with me, or perhaps at me. It was a lot of fun to put together and I’m glad you guys liked it.

This month the subject matter expert is, once again, Polly Scott of the Wyoming Retirement System. She got me the information, she’s very helpful… thank you very much Polly.

The subject of this month’s Subject Matter Minute is the Wyoming 457 deferred compensation plan.

First of all, what is it. It’s a retirement plan. We have our pension, which is probably top two of the best benefits that we have as state employees, and that’s most likely the thing that’s going to get you the most towards retirement. And then we have social security, which hopefully we’ll have at that point. But generally speaking, you’re going to need some extra money put aside of your own money to have a comfortable, sustainable, retirement. That’s what this is… the 457 deferred comp plan is a retirement vehicle for you to put your own money aside.

Why would you want to do it? First of all, if you’re not doing it you’re losing $20 a month! All state employees of the executive, legislative, and judicial branches, for sure, will get a match of $20 a month if you put in $20 a month. So if you simply do the minimum of $20 a month the state matches it. If you’re not doing it, you’re losing $20 a month, so please do it for that reason at least.

There’s lots of other good reasons.

It’s easy. The money comes automatically out of your account and like other similar things you can get it taken out pre-tax or post tax. If you get it taken out pre-tax, it reduces your taxable income. If you get it taken out post tax, you can take the money out in retirement tax-free.

Another good reason to use it is the money is immediately yours… you’re immediately vested. So right away after you put money in. If you leave your job you can keep that money in that account.

Also, you decide how the money is invested. Well, if you want to. There’s actually three different ways to do this and I’ll go into those later.

Some of the details: You can contribute a minimum of 20 and a maximum of $18,000 a month. There are situations when those getting close to retirement can contribute more than the maximum of $18,000 a month. If you’re in that situation please contact WRS.

You can also add money to this account by rolling over accounts… so other IRAs or 457 s from another job can be rolled into this account.

When you leave employment you can either keep the account; keep logging in and managing the account, or you can roll it into an IRA or a or another jobs 457 plan.

Keep in mind that this is not a savings account, this is a retirement account, which means that you can’t just withdraw money. There are certain scenarios where you can. First of all, obviously you can withdraw money when you retire. That’s the natural scenario. Second of all, you can when you leave employment with the state. Now keep in mind if you do that you’re gonna be hit with some fees and some taxes. Another scenario where you can withdraw the money is if you have an unforeseen financial emergency. The IRS says that this is a severe financial hardship resulting from illness, disability, or accidental property loss. So in this scenario we’re not talking about paying off your home loans your car loans or things like that, it’s more like if your home is about to be foreclosed on or if you have a bunch of uncovered medical expenses. If you think that you’re in that scenario talk to Wyoming Retirement System and they’ll help you out. There’s one more… it won’t benefit you much, but if you were to die, your beneficiary can withdraw the money.

Now let’s talk about your involvement in these funds. There’s three different ways you can be involved. First one is not involved at all. This is a pre-mixed target-date fund. Basically, you pick a fund that ends right about when your retirement is going to happen, and then the pros take over and they mix a nice diversified portfolio that as it gets closer to your retirement, becomes more and more conservative. That’s number one… hands off.

Level two is a mix-your-own fund. You have access to several funds that the Wyoming retirement system has put together and you decide which ones you use. You can have them all in the international fund, or you could have them all and the bond fund, or you can mix and match. So you have some involvement there.

Level three is a self-directed brokerage account. This is for the pros, and it’s done through TD Ameritrade. If you’re interested in doing that, go ahead and talk to Wyoming Retirement System, and they’ll get you set up. There are fees associated with these things… there always are. These are very low. The Wyoming retirement system board is tasked with finding low-fee, high quality investments, and that’s what they do.

I think that’s all I’m going to cover this time. I could go on and on about investing I suppose, not that I’m a pro, but I’m looking through the Wyoming Retirement System information and there’s just so much stuff! But we’re gonna keep it to that. Just know that you should definitely be investing at least twenty dollars a month in the 457. If you are a state employee that will be matched by the state, please put the $20 in and make an extra twenty.

Don’t forget to look down on the show notes where you’ll find links to all sorts of important stuff including an enrollment form. If you just want to jump in and do that target date fund, go down, find the link, and enroll. All right, thanks for watching! Remember again to subscribe to my channel and I’ll see you next time on the Subject Matter Minute!

Subject Matter Minute, Episode #9 – Retirement Goal Calculator

If YouTube is blocked for you or your agency, you can scroll to the bottom of this post to view it from Google Drive.

You can also listen to an audio version: Episode #9: Retirement Goal Calculator.

Welcome to another episode of the subject matter minute. I’m Matt Nagy, thanks for joining me.

Sometimes here I say “hello fellow state of Wyoming employees,” but I
got to admit, I’m feeling a little bit lonely right now. Last episode, I asked
you guys to post your favorite hair band, or a hair band concert from the 80s down below, and I got exactly zero responses. So it could be a couple things here…either I am the only gen Xer out of the 900 or so of you that watched the video, or perhaps you’re embarrassed to admit that you liked hair bands back then? I know there’s a lot of people that make fun of that era but you know music is what it is… If it makes you feel good you like it, and it made me feel good. I loved it!

So you can go back to that episode and comment if you want to or,
you know, no pressure… you don’t have to do that at all, but I’m hoping I’m not the only gen Xer out there!

Before I go on I want to thank last month’s subject matter expert, which again was EGI. Thanks guys for getting me the information.

Today’s subject is actually a tool. I’m going to show you the retirement goal calculator!

The retirement goal calculator. This is a sweet tool put out by the Wyoming retirement system just a month or two ago that can help you decide if you have enough money saved for retirement. Obviously, this month’s subject matter expert is the Wyoming Retirement System. Specifically Polly Scott. She was the one who pointed me in the right direction for this and thought that this would be a great thing to show you guys first. And, she answered some of my questions, so thanks Polly for helping me out!

I’m gonna take you there, show you how to do it, and run you through a couple scenarios. The nice thing about this thing is that it’s simple and that you don’t have to go find your taxes and financial information and input all this stuff. It does some figuring for you and it keeps it simple.

Here’s the retirement goal calculator. You find it by going to this URL: http://retirement.state.wy.us/en/DC/Goal-Calculator Once you get there scroll on down. It’s really quite straightforward. I’m gonna throw in some numbers just to show you how it works.

First Step in Retirement Goal Calculator — Please click image for larger version

Let’s just say my current annual income before taxes is $45,000. That’s your annual income. I’m pretty sure that I’m gonna need 90% of that in retirement. How many years until you retire? Basically it’s about 15 years in reality so let’s put that in. How many years do you estimate that you’ll be retired? Well, considering that I have a 99 year old grandpa who is still building houses at this point I’m gonna say at least thirty. Thirty is the max in this calculator. Once you fill those in you can see your retirement goal is $40,500, which is ninety percent of $45,000.

Please click image to see larger version

Let’s go to the next step. This is social security. This is kind of an estimate, but as you can see here, it gives you some numbers. Mine’s between twenty and fifty thousand, so let’s just say that maybe you know my income will go up a little bit and by then I’ll have fifty thousand a year… let’s say twenty five percent. Now you can see once you do that it fills in a little bit of this graph over here. So right now you’re getting $11,250 a year. You haven’t quite made it there.

Now let’s go to the next step. At retirement, how many years will you have been employed? Basically, I will have been employed 33 years if I stick it out with the state. This is the one thing you do need to know… which tier you are in. I’m a Tier two employee because I came in late.

Please click on image to see a larger version

Oh my! Based on my inputs, I should exceed my desired income! You can see it right here… my retirement goal was $40,500, and my estimated retirement income will be $40,950. That’s basically because of the years of service.

Please click on the image to see a larger version

Now I’m gonna adjust my goal. This time let’s do a scenario where I am not saving enough money and will need to save more. Let’s do $45,000 here. Let’s say that I want a hundred percent of my income. I’m going to still say fifteen years till I retire and I’m still going to want that to last thirty years.

Let’s go to the next step. Let’s do the same thing here… 25 percent.

Next step. Let’s just say that I’ll only have been employed for twelve years, and that I’m still a tier two employee.

Next step. Now there’s another step that wasn’t there when I was saving enough money. Now they want to know how much you’ve saved in retirement on the side. I’m gonna say $10,000 in an IRA or something like that. You know the rate of return is usually like 7% to 8%, let’s just say 6% to be safe.

Next step. Okay, I have not saved enough money by any means! You can see that I’m about halfway there. When I retire I’m only gonna be making $22,000 every year and it gives you a number that you’ll need to save every month until retirement. Hopefully yours isn’t nearly as shocking as that number!

So run some scenarios, change up how many years you work for the state or how much retirement you have saved on the side, or whatever… just run some numbers and see where you’re at. Hopefully this will help you out.

I hope you found the retirement goal calculator useful. Hopefully when you put your numbers in there you were really close to having what you need or maybe even over, and if not, you know you can talk to the retirement folks about the deferred compensation, or find some other way to invest the money.

Thanks again to Polly Scott of the Wyoming retirement system! I want to thank her for getting me the information, and for putting together the
calculator, and I’m sure we’ll be talking to her a lot more down the road about more stuff! That’s it for this subject matter minute, have a great day and we’ll see you next time!

Subject Matter Minute, Episode #8 – Short & Long Term Disability 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.

You can also listen to an audio version: Episode #8: Short & Long Term Disability Insurance.

Hello, and welcome to another episode of the Subject Matter Minute. If you’re new here, my name is Matt Nagy and I work for A&I… more specifically HRD or Human Resources Division. I’m a trainer. Thanks for joining us, and if you like what you see in here, please pass
the word to your coworkers!

Before we get started… like usual, I want to thank our subject matter expert from last month who was Employees’ Group Insurance, or EGI. We’re gonna be hitting them up a lot… they are going to be my subject matter expert a lot because they deal with a ton of our benefits. There’s some other stuff but they are the go-to for a lot of them, so thanks again EGI, your a whole crew down there… appreciate what you’ve been doing and appreciate your hard work!

I want to go into my background a little bit again. I am a child of the 80s. I went to high school in the 80s… graduated in 88, so you know what that means? Yes, I loved hair bands… big time. I still do to a certain extent. I was in Casper a lot because Casper was the cultural hub of the hair band era! They somehow brought in all the bands that mattered… we’re
talking Slaughter, Cinderella, Guns and Roses, Bon Jovi… they brought them all in. So I was in Casper and I probably rubbed shoulders with a bunch of you folks out there! You know it’s true, we all loved them.

Bon Jovi – One of many hair bands that rocked the 80s!

At the time, a lot of people had really long hair. I was too lazy to grow out long hair so instead, I did with a lot what a lot of lazy people did at that time and I went with the mullet. Yeah pretty hot…

And, if you ask my wife or a lot of my friends they would attest to the fact
that I kept it all at way past its period of usefulness… way past when I
should have. However, I really liked it, I enjoyed having some hair, and now since I don’t anymore…

Eventually I’ll probably be blading it all off because this is getting really thin… it’s that natural progression.

Big shout out to the Casper folks and the Casper Event
Center for getting me in trouble in my youth and allowing me to sneak off to concerts… it was a lot of fun.

All right we’ve got to get to the subject at hand… this month we’re going to be covering short term disability and long term disability insurance.

First, like usual, I need to thank this month’s subject matter expert which, again, is EGI or Employees’ Group Insurance. This is another one of the items in their boathouse. Especially Pam… Pam helped me out, got all this information to me, and i really appreciate it… thanks Pam.

Basically short term disability and long term disability insurance will cover your income in the case of you getting disabled in one way or another. I think I’d better clarify and say that actually they cover a portion of your income, but I’ll get into that later. If something happens, and you’re unable to work, what would you do without
a paycheck? That’s what this is for.

First, let’s go over how it works. Let’s talk about short term disability. Short term disability will cover your income up to 66 2/3 percent.. don’t ask me why it’s that strange number. 🙂 It starts at 14 days after you
become disabled. It’s short term in that it covers the short term. It starts at 14 days and goes through a hundred and eighty days, which is six months. There is a cap… I believe it’s $1,500 a week or six thousand dollars a month. This doesn’t really come into play for most of us because if you’re making six thousand dollars a month at 66 2/3 percent you’re making good coin… congratulations! But most of us don’t need to worry about the cap.

Long-term disability is just what it says… it’s for the longer term. If you have both short term and long term, long term starts when short term ends. Short term ends at six months (180 days) and that’s when long term disability starts. If you don’t have short term then long term starts at six months. It can go up to three and a half years but that depends on your age. If if that comes into play, go ahead and look down in the notes below the show and you’ll see how it breaks down. Basically, as you get older, the long term disability lasts a shorter amount of time.

There’s some differences… long term disability is at sixty percent of your income, so you’re making a little bit less. The premiums are less as well. You’re only getting sixty percent of your income. The cap on long-term disability is sixty-five hundred dollars a month, so a little bit more, but again, if you’re reaching that… good for you! Most of us are not.

As a quick recap short-term disability pays from fourteen days after the disability to six months, and it gives you 66 2/3 of your income. Long term disability starts at six months and goes to potentially three and a half years at sixty percent of your income.

I need to back up a little bit… if you sign up as a new employee within 31 days of eligible eligibility, you’re good to go, but if you don’t and you decide to sign up later, there’s a couple differences. With short-term disability, if you get disabled in the first 12 months then you’re going to have a 60-day waiting period in that first year… just for signing up after the 31 days of eligibility.

The difference with the long term disability is substantial in that if you don’t sign up as a new employee in that 31 days – you sign up later – you have to go through the company that actually gives us this insurance, and you might get turned down. So it pays, if you think you’re gonna need these sorts of things, to do it when you’re a new employee within the first 31 days.

A couple more things… first of all your premiums (premium calculators: Short Term / Long Term) come out post-tax so these aren’t lowering your taxable income… they come out after tax. But when you get paid, if you’re disabled, that money is untaxed income. There’s a trade-off there I guess.

There’s one more item that I forgot to mention early. With short term disability you have to use up all your sick leave first. So really, short term disability is for somebody who has a low accrual of sick leave or uses it often enough that it’s always gonna be a low pile of hours. You are going to have to use that sick leave first and that shortens the amount of time that you can do short term disability. If you are unable to keep a nice balance of sick leave then short term disability is a good idea; if you have a ton of sick leave, which a lot of longtime employees do, long term disability might be a better idea. So once again here is a link (short term / long term) to figure out what your premium would be for both short term and long term. It’s not very expensive… especially long term. I think I figured out mine was six or seven bucks a month or something like that, and of course it’s based on your income and your age.

I think this episode is a little bit shorter than they’ve been in the past (shorter? not even close) I hope I got you all the information that you need. If not, look down on the notes first because we’re gonna post some more stuff down there. You can also call EGI with questions

Feel free to comment below. Feel free to email me. If you have questions, make sure you get them answered.

I think that’s good for this month. I’ll see all you eighties children and the
rest of you next time! Please come back and see the next episode and thanks for watching the Subject Matter Minute.

Here is the full episode!

Subject Matter Minute, Episode #7 – Medical Reimbursement Process

If YouTube is blocked for you or your agency, you can scroll to the bottom of this post to view it from Google Drive.

You can also listen to an audio version: Episode #7: Medical Reimbursement Process.

Before I get started on this month’s subject I want to talk about the Eclipse. I know that’s kind of a dead horse that’s been beaten in Wyoming, but I was lucky enough to see it in totality, and it was amazing. It was unexpected. I know you’ve heard this from your friends if you didn’t see it in totality but if you didn’t, you need to go chase it in seven years when it goes across the states again! It was super cool.

I was lucky enough to be a part of a big group at Glendo. Ten months ago we reserved three group sites. You had to do it ten months ago, and we had to kind of stay up all night trying to get in, but we did. I was thinking, “what’s what’s the big deal?” I also thought it was kind of expensive. I just wasn’t all that excited, but I am so glad we did.

You know how everyone was saying there was going to be thousands and thousands of people there? Well there might have been, but as you can see by this picture… all of these people are my friends. This is during the Eclipse, during totality, or really close to totality… there is nobody on the beach but us. So we got lucky.

Wyoming Eclipse Group of Friends

Also, when we reserved that campsite, they forced you to do four nights so we didn’t leave till Tuesday morning. We didn’t hit any of the traffic. That being said, I think that 90% of the folks that got stuck in traffic for hours would probably say it was worth it. Again, I thought it was completely unexpected and amazing… the totality part… the rest of it was “meh.” So next time, seven years from now, chase it and go find it!

I’ve got to get to the subject matter because it is a little bit long again. This is a continuation from last month’s episode. I need to thank the subject matter expert, which is EGI (Employees’ Group Insurance), they are also this month’s subject matter experts. Thanks again to EGI.

This month I’m gonna go over the medical reimbursement account process. You use the medical reimbursement account to pay for out-of-pocket expenses. Of course, you’re gonna need documentation/proof that you had these expenses, so we’re gonna go over that… that’s what this is about.

There’s a couple ways you can do this… kind of the old-fashioned way, where you hand in papers, or submit by email, and there’s also a new online portal to submit all your documents. Whichever way you decide to do it, there’s a few things you need. You’re going to need the reimbursement claim form. (It has a much longer name that you’ll see in a few) You’ll need that claim form filled out. You’ll need supporting documentation… most of which is EOBs or explanation of benefits, and receipts and the like. And then for daycare, you’ll either need an itemized receipt or you can have a signature of the provider on the claim form. I will show you how to do that.

First, I’m going to show you how to gather all your stuff, then I’m going to show you how to do it the paper way, and then I’m going to show you how to do it on the online portal.

Let’s go find our EOBs, or explanation of benefits, on the Cigna website.

Go to mycigna.com, and go to the login page. If you don’t have an account, or if you’ve never done this before, you’re going to need to register. You will probably need your insurance card because you’ll need some of that information. Go ahead and do that and then you can log in.

Go to “manage claims and balances” and then down to “claims.” It’s
just showing claims for me (Matthew Nagy), but you can also go to all customers if you have more than one person. Right now I’m looking at this year… if you were doing this the following year, before March 31st, you could do ‘within previous year.’ Since I’m in the middle of the year still, I’m going to look at this as if I wanted to cash out early. Next, hit apply and now you can see everything.

I know some of you might be freaking out that I’m showing this but I really don’t care if you see who my doctors are. 🙂 So now this shows everything. You can see how many providers I’m going to have to list. First of all, this one I owe nothing, so that one’s not going to
be listed. This one we owe nothing, so that one’s not going to be listed. Only the ones that you owe on are you going to be listed. So it looks to me like we’re going to have four providers. As I mentioned before, you
can group them on the flex form. With Bressler, I would put the date range from May 26 to June 9th, and add these all together for the for the money line.

Now let’s talk about how you get your EOBs, because that’s why we’re here.

If you want to get your EOB, you click on their name and that takes you to the information page, and you can see the EOB right here. Now
what I do is right-click on it and open it in a new tab, because if you just
click on it, there is an issue. It opens it up in the same window. If you’re doing it paper-based you would print it, and if you’re gonna submit it online then you would download it now.

Now I’m gonna show you what happens when you go back when you
just click on it. You have to reload the page and continue, so that’s why I suggest that when you go to the EOB you right-click on it and open it in a new tab. Then it just opens it in a new tab and when you’re done with it you can close that tab.

I mentioned that you can group things but you’re still going to have to go into each one and print or save the EOBs.

So you go through all these… you print them or you save them, and you’re ready to go either to mail stuff or to drop it off down at EGI in Emerson or to upload it to the employee portal.

Now that you have all your EOBs in line, let’s go through filling out that form.

Here is the medical reimbursement and dependent care account claim form. That’s a mouthful! It’s pretty straightforward to fill out the upper section: agency name, agency number, your social, your name all that jazz. If it is a new address please check the box so they can update their records.

The medical reimbursement section is here. As I mentioned, you can combine sessions for the same doctor. If you have 4 different sessions to a doctor, you can go ahead and put their name in once, and the date range that those happened in. Then add all the money together for the amount box. Then add them all up and put the total in the total area.

The dependent day care reimbursement area down here is slightly different in that you need to get the tax ID of the provider and the name. Then add the date and the dependent that is being taken care of and the amount. You also either need an itemized receipt from the provider or the signature from the provider for the day care.

Skip the ‘office section only’ and go down to the bottom where you’ll sign it and date it. There’s a lot of good information in here… please read it because there’s instructions about how to submit stuff, and some of the rules associated with this.

So you have all your EOBs, you have your claim form filled out, now let’s go to the online portal and show you how to submit things that way.

You can find the employee portal on the egi website. Typically, you’re probably set up with egi with your state email, so just like other things that you login to (like Wyotraining and those sorts of things) you’ll log in with Google. Choose your state email and then you’re into the portal. It may make you do the two-factor authentication to get in, and you may have to get a number off your cell phone… so do what you have to and you’ll log into the portal…..

PLEASE WATCH THE VIDEO ABOUT THE ONLINE PORTAL. THE TEXT ALONE IS VERY HARD TO FOLLOW. IT HAS BEEN DELETED.

We’ve got to end it here! Sorry these have gotten so long. I’m going to try to find some short subjects in the future, but you’ve got to cover everything sometimes. Thanks for joining me once again, and I look forward to seeing you guys next time on the Subject Matter Minute!

Here is the full episode!