Subject Matter Minute Blog – Page 6 – Covering Important Topics About State of Wyoming Employment

Subject Matter Minute, Episode #21 – Public Employee Pension Plan, Part 2

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 #21 – The Public Employee Pension Plan, Part 2

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. This is part 2 of a two-parter on our pension. If you missed it, the last episode was Episode #20, and it covers a ton of information about the pension… the first half of this two-part series. This one’s gonna be a little bit long, just like last time… I apologize up front, and I’ll save that little tidbit about my daughter for next time. 🙂

We’re gonna jump right in. As I said, please go back and watch the first episode, Episode #20, on your pension. In that, we covered a bunch of details… we covered what a pension is, how much comes out of your check, when you become vested, how you accumulate service credits, when you can retire, how much you can expect to get, and what you can do if you leave employment before you retire.

In part 2 we’re going to cover what happens to your pension if you die before retirement, beneficiaries, applying for retirement, retirement payments, returning to work after retirement, and a few other small items of interest.

Who knew there was so much involved in a pension! Maybe some of you guys who are getting close or are dealing with it knew, but the rest of us probably didn’t… I know I certainly didn’t.

First of all, number one thing when you first get your job with the state… make sure you go in log into your account and designate a beneficiary. This person will get your benefits if you die.

So if you die before retirement, whether or not you’re vested makes a difference in what your beneficiary will get, or the choices that they would have. If you’re not vested at the time of your death – you know less than 48 months of service – then your beneficiary will get a lump sum of twice the amount in your account. Now keep in mind we’re talking about the public employee pension plan. This is a bit different in the other ones like the public safety plans, but all of this is simply for the majority of us in the public employee pension plan.

If you are vested at the time of your death your beneficiary can either take a lump sum or take a lifetime monthly benefit. Basically what you would have gotten… sorry. A beneficiary must be at retirement age to receive the lifetime benefit.

I’m going to apologize up front… I will be referencing my notes because this is a lot of information, and while I know it, it’s a little bit hard to just throw out there… so forgive me for that.

As I was saying, if you were vested at the time of your death, your beneficiary can either elect a lump sum or a lifetime monthly benefit. Any beneficiary must be at retirement age to receive the lifetime benefit. A spousal beneficiary can wait before they start taking the benefits, but only till the member, you, would have been 70 and a half years old.

A non spousal beneficiary who is not of retirement age at the time of your death would only be eligible for the lump sum. There’s a lot of specific timing requirements for non spouse beneficiaries, so if that’s what’s going on and you need to know about that, please contact WRS.

There are other scenarios, such as people with more than one beneficiary, or if an entity is your beneficiary (like a trust). If if you need to know more about that go ahead and contact WRS on that as well.

One little interesting tidbit… you can change your beneficiary anytime pre-retirement, but your spouse has a say… basically your spouse’s consent is required. I thought that was pretty interesting.

So that’s if you die before you reach retirement age. We’re gonna talk about what happens when you die after you reach your retirement age in just a minute, but first let’s talk about applying for retirement. First of all you’ve got to choose a retirement date, obviously. If you want to retire as soon as you’re eligible, keep your birth date in mind because you need to be 60 under tier 1, or 65 under tier 2, or meet the rule of 85. I went over that in the first half of your pension, so check out that video… Episode #20. You apply for your benefits online and you need to log into your account on or shortly before your last working day.

This is a really good time to contact Wyoming Retirement System and talk to them about it because it’s a process and there’s some things you need to fully understand. These options I’m going to talk about in a minute… the choices you make cannot be undone. You need to pick between eight benefit payout options. Each one has a slightly different payout amount related to who gets what and how much. They’re all a little different. I’m gonna briefly cover each. If you need to know more information than I’m giving you, WRS has a fabulous video. There’s a link down below… watch it, you’ll get more information on each one.

Option 1 – single lifetime benefit with beneficiary

This is a lifetime benefit for you alone. When you die, your beneficiary gets a lump sum of any remaining balance in your account. There’s something to keep in mind here… typically, retirees burn through the money in their account within three to five years, so really that doesn’t leave much for a beneficiary.

Option 2 – 100% joint and survivor benefit

This is the most straightforward one for members with spouses, probably the one that’s used the most. It’s a lifetime benefit for you, and then a hundred percent lifetime benefit for your spouse should you die.

Option 2 P – 100% joint and survivor benefit with a pop up provision

It’s the same as option two, you have a lifetime benefit and then your beneficiary gets a hundred percent, but this one has a pop up in that if your beneficiary dies before you, then you pop up to option 1. The reason that’s important is that option 1 typically pays out more per month.

Option 3 – 50% joint and survivor benefit

You can probably start to figure these out, right? It’s a lifetime benefit for you and a 50% lifetime benefit for your beneficiary upon your death.

Option 3p – 50% joint survivor benefit with a pop up provision

Exactly the same as the option 3, but should your beneficiary die before you, you pop up to option 1.

Option 4 – 10-year certain benefit

A lifetime benefit for you, but if you die before 10 years of benefits, your beneficiary will only get the benefit to the end of that 10 years. You’re limiting your beneficiary to a 10-year period.

Option 4b – 20-year certain benefit

Same deal, but your beneficiary has up to 20 years, if you should die, to get the benefits.

I know I’m going fast but this is gonna be a long episode!

Option 5 – Single lifetime benefit without beneficiary

It’s exactly that… it’s a lifetime benefit you, and there’s no beneficiary involved. So if you’re single, there’s no one to leave money to, this is the one to take… you’ll get the highest payout per month.

We’re gonna complicate this further… you can also add what’s called a self-funded COLA. COLA stands for cost of living adjustment. This allows you to have your pension payments go up every year by a certain percentage. (cost-of-living) You can choose between one, two, and three percent. Initially, you have a lower payout per month, but then after a two-year waiting period, your pension goes up every year by the percentage you choose. So, I see this as something for people who think that they’re gonna be retired for a while, who expect to live a long time, perhaps have good longevity genes in their family. I think it’s a good option…

A few little tidbits… you’ll get your retirement payments the month following your termination. (Actually it can be up to 2 months) You can have your money direct deposited into your bank. And something to remember is that your monthly benefit is reported the IRS as income, so you’re gonna need to pay taxes if they’re due.

The next section in the handbook goes over the rehired retiree rule. Very hard to say. There are a lot of details to it, but one major point is that if you are truly retired, and then you come back to a job that’s in the same pension plan, you’re gonna have to choose whether or not to keep getting your pension while you’re a state employee, or stopping the pension and adding to your credits. If you keep getting your pension you won’t get any more credits. If you stop getting your pension then you’ll just add on years of service to what you had previously.

Feel free to contact WRS on this and/or read through the handbook for more information. I have a little funny down below… there’s a link to a video. We did aN HR conference this year, and Doug McGee from WYDOT did a little bit on the rehired retiree. Watch it if you want to get a good laugh about the rehired retiree.

Next, the hand book covers disability. If you become incapacitated to the point where you can’t perform your duties, you may be eligible for a disability retirement. To be eligible, you must have three things apply. You must be disabled and apply for disability while you’re a contributing member of the WRS. AND after you’ve had ten or more years of service. AND before age sixty in Tier 1 or before age sixty-five in Tier 2. If you have all of those things then you are eligible for a disability retirement. (actually you are eligible to APPLY for disability. WRS still has to make sure you are eligible)

There’s some differences, so you’re gonna need to contact WRS, obviously.

I feel like I’m talking really fast and maybe even breathing hard from it. I’m gonna quit there, okay? There are a few other topics of interest in the handbook that you can check out. They talk about military deployment, divorce, life insurance, dispute resolution, and more, but I think we’ve covered all the important aspects, you know the meat of the WRS system.

Hopefully these two videos give you what you need… I still suggest you talk to WRS if you’re getting close, but you know, this is a nice review at any point to refresh. All right I’m gonna let you go, I’m gonna see you next time on the Subject Matter Minute!

Subject Matter Minute, Episode #20 – Public Employee Pension Plan, Part 1

You can also listen to an audio version.

Hello and welcome to the Subject Matter Minute, I’m Matt Nagy, thanks for joining me.

Today I am gonna cut right to the chase, because we have a lot of information to cover. I’m not gonna talk about my mullet or my teenagers, I’m just gonna get right to it. Today I want to talk about your retirement, or the public employee pension plan.

The public employee pension plan… I hope I didn’t pop that too much in your ears… or otherwise known as your retirement with the state. First of all, it’s the largest pension plan administered by Wyoming Retirement System. They also administer seven others for other types of employees. You can see them here on this list.

Today we’re going to talk about the one that covers most of us. In case you didn’t know, the pension plan is the mandatory retirement that you get with the state. There’s a ton of great information on the Wyoming Retirement System website. I have some links down below, be sure to click through them. You’ll get some more information in addition to what we talk about today.

The beautiful thing about our pension plan is that you can’t outlive your benefits. We’re putting in a portion of our income monthly, but even when that runs out you will still get a monthly payment for the rest of your life. There’s another name for it… it’s called a defined benefit plan, and that’s because it’s based on a formula and not the contributions. The formula is based on your age, service credits, or years of service, and highest average salary.

A lot of people tend to focus on the amount in the account, and that’s kind of natural because, with the 457k or just a investment account, an IRA, that’s the money that you’re gonna be using for retirement, but in the case of a pension, the only reason you would need to focus on that is if you leave the state and cash out your account or if you die before retirement.

Should you die before retirement, your beneficiary is entitled to either your pension as you would have gotten it, or a lump sum, so it’s very important that you keep your beneficiary information up to date.

There are over 450 employers in the state who use this same plan, so if you were to leave the state and work for another one of those employers, your pension travels with you… you can just continue on.

Things are a bit different for UW and Community College employees. When they first become employees they need to choose between two retirement entities… the Wyoming Retirement System or TIAA. Once they make that choice, they have to stick with it forever, or at least until they terminate employment.

Otherwise, getting this ball rolling is easy. Your employer signs you up and sets up the monthly contributions.

The contributions you do as an employee contribute to the pension as does the state. Basically the state and the employee pay a percentage of the employee’s income. Right now, this year, the total employee percentage is 8.5 percent and the total employer is 8.62. However, I’m not sure why they even list it like this because in our case the employer actually pays 5.75 percent of our percentage. So really you’re paying 2.93 percent of your salary towards the pension.

You can see they’ve got it scheduled to go up, but even by 2021 it’s only going to be 3.68 percent that we are contributing. The state is covering the rest… so not bad, not bad at all.

You qualify for a lifetime benefit once you’re vested and reach retirement age. You need 48 service credits to be vested. Usually this means 48 months. It’s different depending on how many hours a month you work. Most state employees are full-time and are gonna get a month of service for every month they work. If you’re a part-time or seasonal it’s different. If you work 86 or more hours in a month you receive one month of service credit. If you work 40 to 85 hours you get a half service credit, and if you work 1 to 39 hours in a month you get a quarter service credit. So that’s how you figure that out. Once you get 48 service credits, you are vested, which means that even if you quit state employment, you can eventually get your pension benefits when you retire… when you reach that age.

When can you retire and start collecting? Currently there’s two different scenarios… it depends on when you are hired. Currently we have two tiers… they call them tiers… if you were hired before September 1st 2012 you are in tier one. If you were hired on or after September 1st 2012 you’re in tier two. Tier one folks get to retire at age sixty and tier two folks have to wait until they’re 65, or both of them, in either tier, can retire if you reach the rule of 85.

So I got hosed… I feel like I got hosed… I literally became an employee two months after the change to tier 2. Tier 1 folks get to retire at age 60 and they have a higher multiplier percentage… you’ll see what I mean in a minute, than tier two. Us poor folks in tier 2 have to wait until 65, and it’s less a percentage of our max income. Anyways, I missed it by 2 months… yeah.

You’ve probably heard of the rule of eighty five. Under the rule of eighty-five, you qualify for retirement benefits if your years of service and your age equal eighty-five or more. Stop doing math… do that after the show, okay? Keep watching. 🙂

So how much money can you expect to receive when you retire? Well, simply put, the equation is this. You have a multiplier (like I mentioned it’s different for tier 1 and tier 2) times the years of service, times your average monthly salary.

(multiplier) X (years of service) X (highest average salary)

So let’s do a quickie here, just do some quick math. Let’s say your top salary is $4,000 a month, you’ve worked for the state for 20 years, and your tier two. I’m gonna do tier two because it’s a little more simple. So that’s

$4000 X 20 X 0.02 = $1600

Tier two multiplier is 2%. So that means that if that’s my highest average salary when I retire, I’m gonna be making $1600 a month. Not too shabby.

Or you can go to the WRS site and they have a calculator on there. Here you can play around with the numbers. You can change your age at retirement, your years of service, your highest average salary, and kind of play around with the numbers to see what would work best for you.

You can also log in and do an estimate within that area, but the problem with that is that it says that your highest average salary is your current salary. At at the current rate of raises at the state, that might be the case, especially if you’re getting close, but hopefully at least us that can’t retire for a while… hopefully our highest average salary will be more than that?

So the best scenario is to use that calculator that we just showed you.

What are your options when you leave employment with the state? So you can keep your pension… you can leave it with the state, or you can take a lump sum… you can cash out. If you leave it with the state, you will have the same same scenario when you retire… you will get a lifetime benefit… if you’re vested. There’s a lot of things to consider when you’re doing this. WRS has a whole bunch of information on this. Here is a brochure that talks about the questions you should ask yourself. Check that out if you’re getting close, and you’re trying to decide what to do.

If you want to leave your job and take a refund you would get your contributions plus interest… not the state’s contributions.

You also have some time to think about it. You do not have to make this decision right away, so take your time, read up on the choices, and make a good decision.

Like I mentioned, there are a ton of employers out there who also use this pension plan, so if you move to one of them, or leave the state and come back to the state, and did not cash out your pension, then it will continue on where you left off.

I think that’s enough for today! That’s a lot of information. Like I mentioned, we’re gonna have a round two with more information so be sure to tune in next month.

Today I covered what a pension is, how much comes out of your check, when you become vested, how you accumulate service credits, when you can when you can retire, how much you can expect to get via the formula, and what you can do if you leave employment.

Stay tuned next month for information on what happens if you die before you retire, beneficiaries, applying for retirement, retirement payments, and more. That’ll do it for the Subject Matter Minute this month, thanks for joining me and I’ll see you next time.

Subject Matter Minute, Episode #19 – Open Enrollment

You can also listen to an audio version.

Hello and welcome to a very special episode of the subject matter minute. This is the “episode after the crash.” Just last week, or maybe it was the week before, my hard drive crashed… kind of. For those of you in the know, this was actually a RAID, so in theory… it’s got six hard drives in it, and if one of them dies, it can recover all the information when you put a new hard drive in there, and rebuilds it, and all that jazz. Well, it acts like it rebuilt it, but I can’t get the hard drive to mount. In other words, show up on my computer. So I can’t access all my files, which means that my original projects are on there, and all the little fancy graphics that I worked on. Granted, it’s probably about time I rebrand my show, but I wasn’t quite ready for it this month. So this show will be a little bit dumbed down. Still gonna have some amazing content, but you won’t see the usual, or at least some of the usual pomp and circumstance. Maybe I’ll be able to pull some of it, I don’t know. In any case, a little bit harder for me this episode, but hopefully I’ll get it all rescued by next time or it’ll be a whole new show with different graphics because I’ll have to rebuild it. Anyways, I’m gonna be welcoming you again when I start the actual show… thanks for joining me.

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Hello and welcome to another episode of the subject matter minute. If this is the first time you’ve tuned in, my name is Matt Nagy and I’m the e-learning coordinator for Human Resources Division. Now generally on the show we cover state benefits. So over time I’ve become curious what you guys think of them. So today I have created a tiny little survey that I would love for you guys to fill out. Basically, I want to find out your general feeling about our benefit package, and I also want to know which benefit you think is the best. The link is down below… just a little bit of interaction in the show here, if you wouldn’t mind. Go on down there click on that and it’s gonna take maybe 20 seconds of your life to fill it out for me. It is anonymous, so I won’t know who hates the benefits and who doesn’t.

Before I get started with this topic I want to thank last month’s subject matter expert who was, of course, Employees’ Group Insurance. And that leads me right into thanking them again for being this month’s subject matter expert. Like usual, they’re helping me out all the time.

Last month was long-term care insurance. If you didn’t see it, check it out. This month’s topic is something that you hear about every year about this time of the year. I think sometimes it goes in one ear and out the other… kind of depends on your situation at the time. Today let’s talk about open enrollment.

Open enrollment is simply a set amount of time that you have to add, drop, or change your benefits. Specifically the time period is October 1st through November 30th. If you try to make changes after November 30th you will not be able to, you need to do it during open enrollment.

There are three groupings that you need to consider during open enrollment. One are the guaranteed things to either add or drop. These include health insurance and preventive dental. Next, there’s a group of things that have rules or time periods associated with them, and those time periods need to be up before you can make changes. And then the third group are the things you need to consider every year… basically you need to sign up for them every year.

The guaranteed benefits, like I mentioned, are health insurance and preventive dental. You can add those every year during this period. You can also change your health insurance deductible amount, and you can add or drop dependents. Something you need to know is if you’re going to add dependents, you need to have supporting documents such as birth certificate or marriage certificate.

There are two benefits that have waiting periods… these are optional dental and vision. With optional dental, if you did not sign up when you became a new employee or if you dropped it along the way at some point, there’s a three-year waiting period before you can enroll again. Same with vision… if you didn’t sign up as a new employee or if you dropped it along the way, with vision there’s a two-year waiting period. Another side on vision is when you do enroll, you have to be enrolled for two years. You can’t drop it that next year.

Now let’s talk about the benefits you need to consider every year as far as enrollment goes. These are the flexible benefits, which includes the medical reimbursement account and your day care reimbursement. You have to enroll in those every year during open enrollment. This makes sense because you have to decide how much money you want taken out of your check for both of those items.

There’s one more item with flexible benefits. During this period you can also change your tax election to pre-tax or post tax. If I’m making no sense to you as far as flexible benefits goes, EGI has a video that you can go check out talking about them, explaining everything that I was just talking about and more. The link’s down below in the show notes.

The nice thing these days is that you can make all these changes in the egi portal. I have a link to it down below in the show notes and you can also go to their web page to find it. So get in the portal, make your changes… at least see where you’re at with your benefits. It’s very handy.

Alright I think that’ll do it for today thanks for tuning into the subject matter minute and I’ll see you next month!

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 #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 #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!

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