kepler1 t1_iuau1md wrote on October 29, 2022 at 10:19 PM

Reply to comment by Jr712 in Starting a new job in Nov or Dec. Family has high medical costs and we've met our OOP max this year. Am I best off using COBRA until EOY? by Jr712

Your situation is definitely more complicated than usual, so I would get HR verification of your assumptions in writing.

I don't know how your scenario would work unless you mean, you decline coverage as a new employee, and then because it's open enrollment season for 2023, you elect next year's coverage. This may be complicated -- depends on how the company HR policies work. Maybe because you're starting so soon to the end of the year, they assume your choices carry over to 2023? What you want to avoid is a situation / misunderstanding where you declined coverage, and you actually declined it for the next year as well.

So investigate thoroughly with your new company's signup policy.

Jr712 OP t1_iuaw0ib wrote on October 29, 2022 at 10:34 PM

Yeah I need to confirm if I can separately decline coverage for the rest of this year and just enroll for next year starting in January. Is that the main potential issue you’re seeing?

kepler1 t1_iuay4pf wrote on October 29, 2022 at 10:51 PM

Yes, I agree, that is the main issue and if you can get clear confirmation that that is how the company would handle it, I think you would be in the clear.

If you cannot get that clear confirmation, out of safety I might just enroll assuming that your choices will apply for rest of this year and into next year, and that you will begin your new job's health plan as soon as you start work.

Now here is a bit of gray area up to your discretion/judgement: You might try enrolling in COBRA anyway and submitting claims under your old plan. As you said, you're not supposed to have COBRA once you have another health plan, but maybe the systems are not in sync to tell each other that very well, especially for a new employee enrolling in the middle of a month towards the end of a calendar year. Maybe the worst that could happen is that an expense/claim gets bounced back and you have to claim it under your new plan. (and you would be out the COBRA premium as it didn't end up being used as you thought) It all depends on whether the cost/risk of doing this is worth the difference in out of pocket expenditure you're saving.