Healthcare Coverage Strategy // GEHA

welcome back folks open enrollment season is the time when many americans have the chance to shop for new health insurance this year because of covid 19 it could be more important than ever to take time to shop for your insurance coverage not only are you making a decision about your health benefits but you're making a significant financial decision as well jean chatzky personal finance expert joined us with strategies for selecting your health plan during open enrollment let's start off by you know really asking why it's so important to shop for health insurance

during this open enrollment period well open enrollment period is the only time each year you have to shop for health insurance and that's true whether you get your health insurance from your employer whether you get it on an exchange or on the private market whether you get it through medicare this is the time you have to make changes it's limited so you better act soon this can really be a daunting time for so many people so how do shoppers make smart decisions that can benefit their family's health and their financial wellness

you need to basically understand two different things first the lay of the land as far as the plans that are available to you and how much they cost and that means understanding the difference between an hmo which requires you to stay in network usually costs a little less a ppo which allows you to go out of network premiums are usually a little bit higher and a high deductible health plan which may be an hmo or a ppo but gives you the ability to put some money into

a health savings account that you can use to pay for health health expenses at a discount because of the tax treatment but you can also grow into an account that could be used to supplement your retirement you have to take that information and then line it up against your own health care needs how much do you use health care do you have doctors that you want to see or prescriptions that you take and are they in the plans that you

are looking at is there a dental benefit or a vision benefit if you're looking at a high deductible health plan with an hsa are you being offered incentive dollars a contribution from your employer or your insurer into that plan which can help defray the cost all of these things are really important as you try to figure out what's right for you and additionally you want to think about how you're going to use insurance this

year and that means thinking about whether you are planning to have a baby whether you're planning to have surgery or if there's anything else in the offing that might increase the amount that you're spending on health care this year that is such valuable information is there a place we can go to kind of get more information if we need it absolutely go to g e h a dot com slash shop 2020. i've put together

a step-by-step guide to walk you through you know before we go i've heard about these high deductible health plans and honestly when i hear high deductible that kind of scares me a little bit it sounds very risky are there some benefits to these types of plans well they tend to cost less in terms of premiums so that's the first thing it's a it's usually a trade-off between the premium and the deductible but the benefits are that they allow you to open a health savings account in many cases

you put some money into that account pre-tax so you get a tax benefit for doing that you can grow that money by investing it tax-free and when you pull the money out to pay for medical expenses you're not taxed and the benefit of that is that it's a basic 25 discount on all your health expenditures that you use the money in the account to pay for you can also grow the money into a supplemental account for retirement these are the fastest growing health

plans in the country and so they are definitely worth a look great information gene thank you so much for more information health benefit information rather and resources visit geha.com this was a paid segment