Insurance benefits

My employer just changed our insurance carrier and is contributing a set amount to each employee for insurance of $510.00 monthly. If you want to insure your spouse they are contributing another $200.00 or a total of $710.00 per month . Any cost over the allowances are deducted from your payroll check.

This in effect just gives the employees who insure there spouse a $2400.00 a year raise that single or employees whose spouse has their own insurance are denied. This seems like discrimination to me. Why shouldn't the rest of us get the same $200.00 a month raise?

whitetigerraa said:

Why shouldn't the rest of us get the same $200.00 a month raise?

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Because the extra $200 is given to married employees only.

No, it's not discrimination, it's part of a corporate benefit package.

You are always free to quit and seek other employment.

This is actually not particularly uncommon, is quite legal, and is not any kind of illegal discrimination. People who are insuring spouses have higher premium costs than you do. Why should you get a windfall that they don't?

As already mentioned multiple times, it's not illegal nor discrimination in any way. In fact, if you really want to go down that road you should crunch the numbers. You would find out that you are probably the one making more money. With group health insurance plans like most employers use, the cost of covering families more than doubles. Even with individual plans, the cost is double for family protection.

Single: Actual cost $6,025/yr - Employer $6,120 = $-95 balance

Married: Actual cost $12,834/pr - Employer $8,520 = $4,314 balance

Using the above generic estimates from Zane benefits, you'll see that you actually make quite a bit more because insuring families is more expensive. So I argue that you receive a pay reduction to properly compensate the married people....or do your homework next time.

Very common and totally legal.

A $510.00 contribution to your insurance is pretty large. I wouldn't complain at all if I were you.

It clearly didn't occur to you that the premium cost goes up whenever you add a spouse or family. On our insurance plan, the monthly premium amount for employee + spouse coverage is a little over twice as much as the employee only premium amount. Using your company's scenario of $510/$710 per month, under our plan an employee who covered their spouse would be left paying over $900/month out of their paycheck for that coverage, whereas an employee who just covered themselves would pay about $300/month. In that context, the extra $200/month doesn't seem like that much, does it?

The cost I pay to include my husband on my insurance is just short of triple what I would pay as an individual.