Health insurance etc. for the baby

[bowies]

How will this/did this work for you?  Did you add him/her/them to all your benefit plans (health, dental, vision, etc.) or did you just do health?

[jene]

We have 90 days from the date of birth to add him/her. We will only be doing health initially

[mrssandro]

I think we just did health for the first few years. Then we added her dental when she turned 2.

[thatgirl2478]

we just did health until she turned 3 (we would have done it before she turned 2 but DH forgot that we needed to add her until after open enrollment...)

[jewel]

We have 30 days from birth to add. We haven't done the math yet on my policy vs. my husband's, but if it's mine, we'll add to all policies because vision and dental are free.

[Deleted]

I don't think we had a choice but to add the baby to all of our benefits at once.

[picksthemusic]

I have 30 days from birth to add baby (baby is automatically on my insurance from birth, but it's not 'official' until 30 days), and I don't think I added her to dental until she was a year old. Vision will wait until she's 3 or so.

[Stingyshark]

We had 45 days to add her to our insurance; initially we enrolled her in health only. When we found out she had a lip tie, we added her to the dental insurance (We had about 7 days left of open enrollment when we found out, phew!)

I think the health ins. would have covered the lip tie revision, but our deductible for our dental is $50 vs $1000 for our health. We would have been on the hook for the full $400 for the lip tie with the health - instead we pay $120 with the dental ins.

[hbear]

We started with health. We had 60 days from birth to add her. We just put her on dental this year now that she's 2.

[mrsnole]

We have 30 days from birth to add LO to insurance. We only did health for the first couple of years.

[Deleted]

We had only 30 days to add baby under our company policy. Baby only got health (we declined medical and dental for baby) we will be doing the same this time around.

[kermit]

Apr 7, 2014 9:27:20 GMT -5 bricco said:

It is super expensive to add LO to our insurance (like an ADDITIONAL 450/month).

So we were going to go with a child-only private plan. Private plans run around 200/month, so this was a much better option for us. But the baby can't be added to a private insurance until after he is born, so birth and hospital expenses would not be covered. In fact, with the waiting periods, LO would be without insurance for 2-6 weeks. If he's born April 1-15, his private insurance could start May 1. If he's born April 16-30, his insurance wouldn't kick in until June 1.

Our next thought was to add him to my insurance at birth (well, within 30 days per the policy) to get all his initial coverage taken care of, but then drop it during the next open enrollment period for the private plans (January-March 2015). This doesn't work though, because he wouldn't be eligible for insurance if we voluntarily dropped coverage. Also, we can only make changes to our company insurance effective September 1 because that's when the open enrollment period is for our school district.

SO..

We are going to add him to my insurance at birth (450/month). We are ALSO going to get him a private policy at the same time (200/month). We will drop him from my insurance in September. So he'll be doubly insured for a few months, and then we'll be down to the private policy.

It's a major cluster.

Oh and both of these are for health and dental because we were told dental is required on all pediatric policies.

I also work for a school district and was going to do the private thing because it's about $350 to add her to mine. I haven't looked into it yet though. I thought the birth expenses would go on my insurance anyway?? I think putting her on SO's insurance is cheaper than mine but probably not cheaper than private. I guess I need to start looking into this, I thought it was still kind of early. 

[pinotgrig]

Just health. If you have the option to just do this, it's cheaper. The general consensus from everyone I've talked to is that most babies don't need vision or dental care until a few years anyways.

[sunshine608]

We have 30 days to add him and will probably add him to everything since we already have "family" coverage and adding him won't increase the cost. It'll really be just paperwork for dental and vision.

[kermit]

Apr 7, 2014 10:26:31 GMT -5 bricco said:

Apr 7, 2014 10:17:54 GMT -5 kermit said:

I also work for a school district and was going to do the private thing because it's about $350 to add her to mine. I haven't looked into it yet though. I thought the birth expenses would go on my insurance anyway?? I think putting her on SO's insurance is cheaper than mine but probably not cheaper than private. I guess I need to start looking into this, I thought it was still kind of early. 

YOUR birth expenses will go on your insurance anyway.  I don't know about your policy, but mine basically said that the baby's birth expenses/hospital stay is ONLY covered if you add the baby to an existing plan that allows you to cover the baby back to the birth.  You would probably be able to do this with either your insurance or your H's, but not with private.

We also looked into having me doubly covered (private+school district) for a portion of time, but that ended up not working out well.

The other fun thing is that having the baby 'doubly covered' doesn't mean you pay less for the actual healthcare---private policies and corporate policies do NOT work together as primary/secondary.  How annoying is THAT?

I would definitely suggest you get started looking at it.  The insurance has been the single most stressful part of this pregnancy for me.

I know a few co-workers have gone the private route and it seems to have worked for them, but that was a few years ago. I have a local BCBS plan and I'd definitely call them for a private plan first, since I know that's what co-workers have used. Maybe it's easier since it's the same company, even though not the same plan. 

[gretchenindisguise]

I think babe will be added automatically - that's how it worked last time.

And it won't increase our premium. We are on a family plan, and it doesn't increase with number of children. Won't add to dental and vision until later.

[ringstrue]

All at once but its not a lot for us to do it that way. I'd add the baby as soon as they start getting active though because they can knock a tooth out or crack one from hitting their face on something and you want to be covered for that.

[robinsbff]

hmmm, i don't know what the time limit is for us. i'll get DH to research that, it's his policy. i do know that we've checked already and are already on a 'family' plan so it won't cost us any additional premiums once baby is on the plan.

[catsarecute]

We are adding her to my husbands insurance as soon as possible.