It’s that time of the year again when my husband has to choose what kind of medical insurance and other benefits we would avail as a family with their company. HR gave them until October 30 to decide. The company decided to change medical/dental insurance provider from United Healthcare to Cigna. The other stuff remains the same.
In any case, it was also timely as we wouldn’t have realized that he has this additional critical illness benefit that will help us pay off our medical bills. For UMR, our annual out of pocket maximum payment is $4,500 for individual and $9,000 for family. The ER visit, surgery and inpatient hospital stay already maxed out my annual out of pocket maximum. That’s $4,500 we need to come up to pay for our share of the bill. The hospital allowed us to pay in installment and gave us a grace period of 120 days.
We could have used the Flexible Spending Account (FSA) that my husband got but we only availed $1,000 for 2020 and we’re down to the last $200. In any case, when we were choosing the benefits we would like to avail next year, I noticed the Guardian Critical Illness Insurance that my husband availed on my behalf with their company. From the plan summary, benign brain tumor is included in the list of critical illness covered. Since I do have a benign brain tumor, I need to file a claim with the doctor’s report on my illness. Guardian would issue a check to my husband at the amount of 75% of the plan. This is heaven sent as we won’t need to save up money to pay the hospital. We will be saving a portion of it as well in case we would be paying taxes on the insurance payout. Thank you Lord for this timely provision and answered prayer. That’s one less worry in our plate especially at this time.
Claudine on the Go 