Insurance – Page 2 – Subject Matter Minute Blog

Subject Matter Minute, Episode #22 – Health Savings Accounts

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 #22 – Health Savings Accounts.

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 and welcome to another episode of the Subject Matter Minute, I’m Matt Nagy, thank you for joining me. Before I get started on today’s episode, I want to first thank the subject matter expert from last episode, which was Wyoming retirement system… specifically Polly Scott. She always makes sure that I’m not making stuff up and that I’m getting things right. Thanks!

Also, a couple episodes ago I briefly mentioned something about my daughter that I wanted to talk about get off my chest. I don’t know if you guys remember but back in the day, I mentioned that my parents had given us a Subaru Outback for our daughters to use. An older model, but a fabulous car that they had bought new. So my older daughter got to drive it. Well, within three weeks she totaled it. Don’t worry she, was fine… it was a low-speed thing. Then after that I had a 93 Camry that I bought from my parents a while back. I put enough money into it to make it tip-top. So I let her drive that and about five months ago she totaled that car. Again, she’s fine. This one was in Ridley’s parking lot, right into a pole… dead center in the front. I mean crushed it. I’m glad she was fine, but heartbreaking two wonderful cars down the tubes. She had to buy her next car herself, obviously, and now my younger daughter turns 16 so she is driving as well. We set her up with a really cheap 97 Sentra, and and we also tried to change her behavior with some promises of helping her with a car after high school if she doesn’t total this one. I don’t know if it’ll help, but so far so good with that one. Thanks for letting me tell my story and get that off my chest. I know that speaking to people when I tell this story that others deal with this, so a lot of you out there feel my pain.

Today I’m gonna talk about something related to our healthcare plan. It’s a change you can make if you can afford it, and if it works for you. Today I’m going to talk about health savings accounts.

Health savings accounts, also known as HSAs.. Before I go into that I want to thank this month’s subject matter expert on this topic which is Ralph Hayes of employees group insurance. Of course it’s employees group insurance, right? Ralph helped me out, and he actually has been doing this personally for a while and he’s a believer in it, so he was the perfect person to help me out with this information. Thanks Ralph.

An HSA is like a personal savings account but it is used for health expenses, medical expenses. Set up in 2003 by the government to allow those folks who had high deductible health plans a way to pay for current expenses and future expenses, in a pretty tax favored way.

So in order to take advantage of an HSA you have to, again, have a high deductible health plan, and like the name says, a high deductible health plan has a high deductible. Currently the state has one plan or two plans, that you can use. For an individual, it’s the $1500 high deductible health plan, and for an employee with a dependent or basically families, it’s a $3000 deductible. Now keep in mind that while we the deductible is high with these, it means that your monthly premium is lower. Take me, for instance. Right now, I have a family plan at the $500 deductible point. This means that my premium is about $260 a month. If I go to the $3000 HDHP plan, my monthly premium goes down to about $63, so about a two hundred dollar difference there.

So if you go with this qualified plan that the state offers, you can open an HSA.

Something to know is that the state does not contribute to this plan and the reason I say this, the reason I tell you this, is because after all my reading I found that actually a lot of employers do contribute to HSA. Kind of as a benefit. But not at the state, you have to fund this yourself.

In 2019 you can contribute up to $3500 as an individual into your HSA, or $7000 as a family. At age 55, they give you a little extra room, if you can afford it, you can put another $1000 per year into your account.

First I want to talk about the advantages to an HSA. The big one that caught my eye and got me excited is you get a triple tax advantage. 1. Contributions are tax deductible, which means that you can either pull the money pre-tax out of your check, or any money that goes into the account after tax is deducted from your gross income on your tax return. 2. Earnings are tax-free. A lot of these counts you can earn money, like an IRA basically, and these earnings are tax-free. 3. Withdrawals are tax-free if they are used for
qualified medical expenses. So you’re talking a bunch of tax-free money right there.

Another advantage is funds rollover forever. Once you put them in, they’re yours. This is not like a flexible spending account, where you use it or lose it… this is your money to keep.

As I mentioned briefly the money in this account is invested in the good programs and can grow. There’s a lot of HSA providers out there, but you want to get one that, if you have excess in there, it can be invested like an IRA, and it can grow.

Another advantage is that it’s portable. The money is yours, again, even if you change plans, change jobs, or you retire.

Another advantage is the HSA can be used for retirement after age 65. You can still use it for health expenses, but you can also use it for anything else without penalty. I’m going to go into this penalty thing in just a minute, because now I want to talk about the disadvantages of an HSA.

The number one disadvantage, obviously, is the high deductible. It can be really difficult to come up with that kind of money for the deductible, especially in the first year or two of doing an HSA. That’s understandable.

Number two… unexpected health care costs. Kind of the same deal… if you aren’t putting enough money into your HSA, or it’s early on in your process, the first couple years, you might find it hard to pay for unexpected health care costs.

Now taxes and penalties… I mentioned this earlier. While you’re allowed to withdraw the funds from these accounts for anything that you would like to, if you pay for non qualified items you will have to pay income tax and a 20 percent penalty. I mentioned after 65 you don’t have to pay the penalty. You’ll still have to pay income tax on it, like an IRA, but no 20% penalty.

One last disadvantage is the pressure to leave the money alone. You may be reluctant to seek out medical care because you don’t want to spend that money that’s over there making money, and of course we want everyone to get medical care when they need to.

So really both healthy young people on a budget who want to reduce their monthly payment and families who can afford the high deductible and possibly max out the account, these are the kind of folks who might find these accounts especially beneficial.

Let’s let’s consider my situation for a second. This is me considering this whole thing. If I were to put the two hundred dollars a month that I saved by going to the $3000 deductible plan, I’ll be putting aside $2,400 a year. Not quite the deductible, but honestly we haven’t spent that much as a family for several years several years. Mostly because we’re done with braces and that sort of thing, but we’ve also been pretty healthy. So even at that contribution level of $2,400 a year I could probably expect some money to roll over, and then the account would grow.

Something to keep in mind if you’re thinking about expenses at this point… preventive care is still covered with a high deductible health plan at the same rate as it is now with your lower deductible.

If we were to put a little bit more into the HSA we could get it up to the $3000 deductible pretty easily… with $50 more a month… so a total of $250. That would get us to the deductible. Now, if we wanted to take it even further, I’m sure a lot of you, like me, use the flexible spending account, and typically we put in over a hundred dollars a month. If instead, we put that to the HSA, let’s just say a hundred, that would put us at $4,200 a year in our HSA. So even if you hit your deductible and paid your $3000, you’d have a little bit to roll over. Now, there is coinsurance and all that to take into account too, but $4,200 a year, if you don’t spend it all, you might be able to roll some over.

If you’re spending all the money in your HSA every year, then you are losing out on the growth benefit. However, at least you aren’t worried about the use-it-or-lose-it aspect of the flexible spending account, right? You’re getting the same tax benefit, but you don’t have the stress of trying to spend the money or having to do it by a certain date or buying things you don’t need (like these classes I got, and I got another pair of sunglasses this year because we didn’t have medical expenses… so I bought some computer glasses and then some sunglasses for in the car). You get that tax benefits but you don’t have to worry about that if you go with an HSA.

After after having said all that, trust me, I don’t know the best route for anybody, including myself. I’m just trying to wrap my head around this concept and see if maybe it would work for us. I do know that health expenses in retirement are one of the top expenses, and it’s serious expense. In fact, the last number on the average that we’ll spend on health care in retirement is $280,000! I’m not saying that the HSA will get us there, but it could certainly help and pay a chunk of that, and certainly in a incredibly tax advantaged way.

Again I want to thank Ralph for getting me this information. I find it very interesting. I hope you do too. I’m not telling anyone what to do financially. If it works for your family great, if not stay with that sweet low deductible plan that you have and be happy about it.

Thanks for joining me on the Subject Matter Minute, and I’ll see you next time!

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

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 #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 #14 – Health Insurance for State Retirees

You can also listen to an audio version.

Welcome to another episode of the Subject Matter Minute, I’m Matt Nagy, thanks for joining me. So last month we talked about a subject that’s fairly near and dear to my heart… dental insurance. I hope that was helpful to you guys.

Before I start this month’s topic I wanted to mention that one of the things that I really like to do, one of the things I do every summer, and sometimes kind of in the colder months, is river raft. In one of my earliest jobs at the University I just happened to work with a bunch of guys… it’s just guys I think… that we’re into river rafting, so they got me into it. I own a cataraft, which is not really a raft, it’s the type with two tubes and the frame in between, which personally I think handles better in big rapids, but that’s an aside. Last week I just got back from doing a river that doesn’t really have a lot of rapids, or at least it didn’t this year… it’s the San Juan down in Utah. I’ve done a couple trips that we call the daddy-daughter trip on that River. Basically, it ends up being like five dads and and I guess five daughters and one son this time. One son snuck in, but that’s okay. It was gorgeous… so I’m having a hard time getting back to work. It was a sunny trip, it was kind of chilly, but that just made the time around the campfire, or the fire pan for those in the know, so much more enjoyable. We had a great time. I know there’s more of you River rafters out there, or river runners, and it’s always good to know more, so feel free to post something down there or throw me an email. You never know what can come of it!

This month’s topic is health insurance for retirees.

Before we do get started on this topic, I’d like to throw out another thank you to Karen Williams. She was my subject matter expert last time on the dental health benefits, so thanks Karen.

This month’s subject matter expert is Pamela Unruh, also of egi. She’s been very patient with me because I was peppering her with emails constantly, trying to get this figured out in my own head. Thanks Pam, I appreciate your patience, and I think I got it all figured out.

I had mentioned that retirees health insurance is the topic, but really an eligible retiree can also continue life, health, dental, vision, and long term care, as long as they’ve had that coverage for at least one year prior to retiring.

The bottom line, something I want to be hitting on a lot here, is that you can keep these things when you retire, but the state contribution goes away. There is a subsidy, but we’re gonna go into that later.

So what makes you eligible? Eligible retirees can be under the age of 50 with at least 20 years service or you can be over the age of 50 with at least four years service.

One other little tidbit that you need to remember is that a retiree needs to apply for coverage within 31 days of the day that their coverage ends… so don’t forget.

Let’s talk a little bit about Medicare because that definitely comes into play as you’re reaching the age 65 or thereabouts. Once you become eligible you must enroll in Medicare Parts A and B. That’s because Medicare is the primary payer… they pay first.

The premiums for these coverages are taken out of your pension, unless there’s not enough money in your pension, then come directly out of your checking account.

I mentioned that the state no longer pays a big chunk towards your insurance, but you can get a subsidy. The subsidy is based on the number of years of service with covered entities…the state, the Community Colleges, UW, and then some school districts. Currently the number is $11.50 per year for those who are not Medicare eligible, and it’s $5.75 a year for those who are. Those both max out at thirty years, which means that if you’re not Medicare eligible you can get a subsidy of $345 a month, if you’ve done thirty years of service. If you are Medicare eligible and you’ve had 30 years of service, that gives you a $172.50 a month discount.

I’ve talked about saving for retirement or retirement in general in a couple episodes, and this topic really ties in. Something a lot of people forget about is the shift of the burden of health care costs from the state to you, and that’s a big shift.

I’m gonna go over a scenario here, and since typically when you retire it’s the retiree plus a spouse, my scenario is gonna be retiree plus spouse at a nine hundred dollar deductible. Currently, if you’re an active employee the total cost is $1822. The state pays $1,660 dollars towards that, so that leaves you with a monthly payment of a $161.79.

Let’s talk about a retiree plus a spouse that is not medicare eligible. Their full price is the same $1822, but the state only pays the subsidy. They do not kick in the big chunk. Let’s assume a max number of service years for the employee… thirty years times the $11.50, which means that they can take off the top the $345. That puts their total monthly payment at$1477.04. So your healthcare costs just went from $161 a month to $1477. That’s a difference of nearly $1315. You finally paid off that house, but you’ve got a whole new payment to deal with. I’m not trying to upset anyone, and I don’t want to be flip about this, I just hope that this information can help people who still have time to save more and take these things into consideration.

Let’s talk a little bit more about Medicare. You can simply drop your state health insurance when you become Medicare eligible. I don’t know what kind of coverages there are, or how good they are, but if you don’t feel like it’s enough for you then you are gonna pay more. Even when you’re both Medicare eligible.

The next scenario is a Medicare eligible retiree and a spouse who is not eligible. They pay $1365.71. Let’s assume the max number of years of service. Now remember that the employee is eligible… that means that they can get the $172.50 from the monthly total. That puts the monthly total at $1193.21, so in that scenario you will still be paying over a thousand dollars more than you were as an employee.

That scenario was a Medicare eligible retiree with a non eligible spouse. The final scenario, obviously, is you’re both eligible for Medicare. Prices do drop at that point, but you’re still gonna be paying nearly six hundred dollars more a month than you were as an active employee.

All that being said, there are some higher deductible plans that can bring down your costs, and there’s also some Medicare supplement type plans. I’ve posted a link below to the charts, and you can see those on there. Basically, what the Medicare supplement plans do is they help with the out-of-pocket costs of Medicare, and they’re much cheaper, but you’re not getting all the benefits of the health insurance.

So the bottom line in all this that you can keep your coverages when you retire, however your costs will go up. Just keep this in mind as you save for retirement and perhaps as you consider what age to retire at.

Hopefully I haven’t made everyone depressed or scared, and hopefully you either knew this and you’re prepared, or you have time to save more money or shift your expectations about when you’re going to retire.

I think that’s it for today. Thank you very much for joining me and I’ll see you next month on the subject matter minute.

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!