Monday, October 05, 2015

a little gambling

Well, as much "gambling" as I ever do.

Today was health insurance re-enrollment and they changed up our plans....went from "high" and "low" to "red," "white," and "blue" options. (I wonder if that's some provision buried in the ACA, that you can't call plans "high" and "low" any more).

I WAS going to spring for the red option that would mean an increase something over 60 dollars a month ($800 total per year) but after talking with the HR Woman - and hearing her say that SHE had planned on getting the red plan before she talked with the rep, then decided on the white plan - and after doing a little mental math, I decided to go with the no-increase (white) plan.

The gambling comes in here: if my health stays about the same as it does now, I might pay as much as $100 more out of my own pocket in the next year for health care. Maybe not even that much - my GP is in the "preferred" group so her co-pay won't go up. And the new plan would be $800 more FOR SURE.

If my health gets vastly worse, this may not have been so good a gamble (specialists have higher co-pays under my new plan) but I figure my health will probably mostly remain the same and the few things that are most likely to change are things my GP could probably handle...

And since there is no hope of a pay raise, not even a COLA, in the coming year, I need to economize a little.

I hope I made the right choice. It's hard to know.

(I did stay with the "high" dental plan - for which I only pay about $40 a month - but when something goes wrong with my teeth, it goes catastrophically wrong (like breaking a tooth), so having really good coverage there is important to me)

I will say the people with dependents really get stuck, they pay A LOT more.

And I got a little stuffed-toy Snoopy out of it. Apparently MetLife is (or is now) our life insurance provider and one of the HR people I had to talk with had a big box of stuffed Snoopies next to her desk, and as I was leaving, she asked me if I wanted one.

I suppose they were brought in for the people with kids at home, but I still took one. Well, she offered.

(Back in the day I collected "advertising premium toys" and the Snoopy has a MetLife hat on)

I also ran to the Walgreen's for a couple things and found they had a new and different (or at least new and different to me) wave of Pony blindbags....this one is mostly glittered but this go-round, the glitter is embedded IN the ponies rather than sprayed on, so it looks better. I bought three - figuring my self-imposed "don't buy silly fun things" can be relaxed a little given my choice. I got a Pinkie Pie, a Pinkie clone in darker pink called Cherry Berry, and Meadowsong, a reddish brown (cola-colored, really) boy pony.

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