Tag: health insurance

Despite ObamaCare, formally known as the Affordable Care Act, having been around for several years now there is still considerable uncertainty around the various tax credits and subsidies on premiums, deductibles, co-payments, and coinsurance. The value of these credits and subsidies are generally dependent on your modified adjusted gross income (MAGI) and family…

President Obama's signature health care legislation, the Affordable Care Act, is very much in place now and in the next few months a number of Americans are going to see a lot more of the regulations and laws come into place. This includes: Penalties for No Health Insurance. Beginning in…

It's that time of the year again. Open enrollment. It's also fall, but as this is a personal finance blog, weather is not the focus. My current employer, a Fortune 500 firm, recently released their employee contribution rates (i.e health insurance premiums) for it's employees and once again rates are…

According to preliminary results from their annual survey of 1,600 employers, Mercer expects employee health care benefit costs to increase by 5.4% next year. You will likely see these costs via higher monthly premiums during your organization's open enrollment period. Fortunately, there are some things you can do to to…

The rising cost of health care coupled with many employers cutting back on benefits has led to a large number of people having to go out into the market place and find their own private health insurance plans to meet their coverage needs. In addition to being more costly than…

Just about anything involving money is a source for negotiation, but many people don’t think about the fact that their severance package is as well. Although we don’t want to think about that day when we may be laid off, it’s important to be prepared to negotiate our compensation package.…

The headline number for 2026: the standard Medicare Part B premium is $202.90 per month, one of the larger year-over-year jumps in the program's history, with the Part B annual deductible at $283. For most retirees the premium comes straight out of the monthly Social Security check — which is…

FSAs don't get nearly the attention they deserve. Every year during open enrollment, I see people scroll past the FSA election screen without a second thought — and that's money left on the table. The basic idea is straightforward: you elect a dollar amount before the year starts, it comes…

There’s a great deal of talk today about the “graying of America.” Thanks to advances in medical technology, many people are now living 20 or more years beyond normal retirement age. However, quite a few of these people must deal with poor health during those years. And, the increased longevity,…

With the passage of health care reform, a major political achievement for the Obama administration, Americans will finally start seeing the actual impacts of many of these new laws. These changes will only initially impact people who buy new policies or are in plans where the coverage year is about to…

If I had to pick one tax-advantaged account most people are underusing, it would be the HSA — and it's not particularly close. I've been contributing to one for years, and the more I've learned about how these accounts work, the more I think of them as a stealth retirement…

Even though President Obama and Congress have signed into law sweeping health care reform many employees are still in the dark about how their employer sponsored health care benefits will be affected and wondering when new provisions in the approved health care bills will go into effect. Rather than reading…

It's that time of year again when workers have to review and are able to modify their employer sponsored health care insurance and other "fringe" benefits. Unfortunately as I reviewed my health care benefits it seems that my employer is providing less (like excluding Chiropractic benefits) but raising premiums, co-pays…