Can someone help me with an insurance question?

[sugarbear]

Our "HR" department is giving me the runaround.

DS was born March 29.
It was my understanding, from our HR dept head, that baby was covered on mom's insurance for a month at no additional cost. Is this universal? Tis was definitely the case with DS1. I made it very clear that after that month, DS would get other coverage. DH was unemployed at the time of birth, but started a new job mid-April. His coverage started immediately.

My work has charged me ~$600 for dependent medical coverage, but no one can tell me why. By my math, DS was covered by me, and then by DH three weeks later. 

I'm not putting up a fight, yet, because I don't know who's right. But I'm thinking someone owes me $600, right?

[lemon]

The answer to this is going to specifically depend on your insurance policy and/or company, so I doubt anyone will be able to provide you with an answer.

I know from my own experience with insurance and giving birth, nothing is "free." My kids were covered immediately under my own policy as long as I submitted a qualifying life event form within 30 days of giving birth. Then things were paid retroactively and my paycheck was deducted retroactively to cover him from his date of birth.

[sugarbear]

Oct 3, 2013 11:29:02 GMT -5 lemon said:

The answer to this is going to specifically depend on your insurance policy and/or company, so I doubt anyone will be able to provide you with an answer.

I know from my own experience with insurance and giving birth, nothing is "free." My kids were covered immediately under my own policy as long as I submitted a qualifying life event form within 30 days of giving birth. Then things were paid retroactively and my paycheck was deducted retroactively to cover him from his date of birth.

Makes sense, thanks. With ds1, I paid nothing additional, and was led to believe that would be true for ds2 as well.

[WOT?*]

Ditto lemon especially the first paragraph.

Mine were covered prenatal (and most I've seen) on my policy but once they were born they were covered as their own individual little entities on our family coverage. When we went from "employee and dependent" to "family" we had to proactively change the status when DD1 was born. When we had family coverage for the next kids we had to add them to the policy or they were not covered after a certain period (30 or 60 days) until the next open enrollment. So, if your company is like this, because there was a three week lapse in coverage between your policy and your DH's, the baby would be covered under your coverage as a prenatal event until birth when he is covered as a separate little person, requiring family or dependent coverage. So your company is requiring the dependent coverage to pay for the dependent policy while junior wasn't covered under your husband's policy for those three weeks. But as lemon said, it totally depends on your policy.

Insurance is like banking - you don't get free stuff. I assume you need the dependent coverage, and the $600 is probably a lot cheaper than paying for the medical costs associated with his delivery and after-care.

[bittybomb]

Oct 3, 2013 11:22:11 GMT -5 sugarbear said:

Our "HR" department is giving me the runaround.

DS was born March 29.
It was my understanding, from our HR dept head, that baby was covered on mom's insurance for a month at no additional cost. Is this universal? Tis was definitely the case with DS1. I made it very clear that after that month, DS would get other coverage. DH was unemployed at the time of birth, but started a new job mid-April. His coverage started immediately.

My work has charged me ~$600 for dependent medical coverage, but no one can tell me why. By my math, DS was covered by me, and then by DH three weeks later. 

I'm not putting up a fight, yet, because I don't know who's right. But I'm thinking someone owes me $600, right?

When my first was born, he was covered under my policy automatically because my birthday is in Feb and my husband's is in Aug.  We both had coverage then because my coverage paid for 100% of the hospital and my husband's only covered 80%.  However, my job only paid for my coverage and we had to pay 100% out of pocket for anyone else, so everyone was added to my husband's.  I dropped my work coverage right after I gave birth (other than the awesome hospital coverage, it was shitty), but my coverage definitely covered my son's hospitalization for his birth, and I paid no additional premium for it.