Question
What is the name of your state? Pennsylvania
The question is:
Is there a federal regulation not allowing me to put through a status change to my health care provider removing my childrens coverage with court approval? Even though her new husband is also covering them under his medical coverage? his coverage started 01/01/2005. I am aware there is a 30 day window to make a change and I did this on Jan. 21, 2005, but this is when I hit the brick wall.
The history behind the question:
My ex-wife remarried 01/01/2005. Her new husband has health insurance provided to him at no charge. They put my 3 children on his health plan (my ex-wife has custody) which is a much better plan than mine. I pay all of the co-pays. My ex-wife and I got approval from the court representative for me to drop my health coverage via a statis change on my children. The company I work for has told me that I cannot drop them from my coverage until we have an open enrollment in October of 2005 because federal law does not allow it. They then informed me that since I had reported this new coverage, my coverage would be secondary to my ex-wifes new husbands. This means from Jan. 2005 to Dec. 2005, I will have to pay a premium (approx. $1800 for the year) for health coverage that my children will never use.
The court representative suggested that I seek some legal advice on this because she has never had a problem with this type of an arrangement with most companies. She did say though that she had heard of some companies trying this because they have pre-paid the premium for the year and do not want to lose the money.
mlmcdon
Answer
Very important question (which makes all the difference to the answer to yours):
Is your portion of the insurance premium taken out of your paycheck pre-tax or post-tax?
Answer
The premium is taken out after taxes.