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For those of you who don't know or remember I will start off by mentioning that DH has diabetes, stage 4 kidney disease, and has multiple severe complications from the diabetes. He also regularly sees a psychiatrist and takes psychiatric medications. We are right now looking into options to get him a preemptive kidney transplant (Preemptive meaning before his kidney function drops to below 20%. Preemptive transplants are showing to have better results, and you can go on the list at any point after your kidney function drops below 30%. His is currently at around 25%) So the probability of him meeting his out of pocket maximum in any given year is quite high. Even if he doesn't, he generally comes close.
So, DH's insurance is changing slightly in the following year. Premiums are a bit lower, the deductible stays the same ($2000), the annual out of pocket maximum stays the same ($4000, which includes the deductible). The biggest difference is that this year copays did not apply to the annual out of pocket max. Next year and going forward they will. The only exception is copays for prescriptions.
We have an HSA that is not through DH's employer. We make all contributions ourselves with take home pay. I think that next year we should take the 4000, add to it his annual prescription costs, divide it by 12, and contribute that much to the HSA each month. This winds up being somewhere in the neighborhood of $375 a month.
He has reservations about tying up that much money each month into an account that cannot be used for anything else. My feelings are that by making these contributions each month we are able to take an unpredictable expense and make it predictable. If he does have anything left over at the end of this year then it rolls over and we can contribute less the following year. He would rather just keep the money in regular savings or something. Or pay costs as they come up and reimburse ourselves later from the HSA (which is what we have been doing this year). But that has left us paying $200 some months and $500 or more in others, depending on what he has going on. I'd rather this be a predictable monthly expense, even if there is some chance we may not need it all in any given year.
So, DH's insurance is changing slightly in the following year. Premiums are a bit lower, the deductible stays the same ($2000), the annual out of pocket maximum stays the same ($4000, which includes the deductible). The biggest difference is that this year copays did not apply to the annual out of pocket max. Next year and going forward they will. The only exception is copays for prescriptions.
We have an HSA that is not through DH's employer. We make all contributions ourselves with take home pay. I think that next year we should take the 4000, add to it his annual prescription costs, divide it by 12, and contribute that much to the HSA each month. This winds up being somewhere in the neighborhood of $375 a month.
He has reservations about tying up that much money each month into an account that cannot be used for anything else. My feelings are that by making these contributions each month we are able to take an unpredictable expense and make it predictable. If he does have anything left over at the end of this year then it rolls over and we can contribute less the following year. He would rather just keep the money in regular savings or something. Or pay costs as they come up and reimburse ourselves later from the HSA (which is what we have been doing this year). But that has left us paying $200 some months and $500 or more in others, depending on what he has going on. I'd rather this be a predictable monthly expense, even if there is some chance we may not need it all in any given year.
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