Hey guys,
So my wife and I have been discussing this and I'm wondering if a lot of people take into consideration whether they're on an HMO vs HSA-based medical plan when planning for kids.
We just had our first back in August so I don't want to get too ahead of myself...but anyway, because I wanted to start up an HSA (and because it was the lowest-cost plan), I signed up for the one with BCBS through new company. Once I started looking into what's actually covered though, it doesn't seem like the *best* thing if we are expecting a lot of doctor visits, etc. I think if we were to get pregnant under the current plan, things could get really expensive compared to the HMO. Our annual cost is around $2500 (total of all costs per pay period) and there's a $5700 deductible (for employee + spouse + kids) that needs to be met prior to coinsurance kicking in (there are pretty much no copays). We're sorta learning the hard way with my son's plagio/brachycephaly condition where we are now considering getting him a helmet.
The upside of the HSA of course, is that we get $1600 from the company upon completing health & wellness activities (e.g. health assessments, health coaching, etc)
I was looking at the HMO option, which is with Kaiser, and the annual deductible is $600. Annual cost of the plan ends up around $4290 or so.
They have an example of what the cost of birth might be but I *think* they're only factoring in the cost of giving birth as a single-covered person which has much lower deductibles. Anyway, from what I saw, the HMO was about $500 less than the HSA... is this generally the case where HMO will end up costing you less out of pocket than HSA (presumably because of the lower deductible)?
Would it make sense, if we wanted to maximize, to try to time getting pregnant (I know this isn't practically as easy as said given how it didn't happen right away with getting pregnant for our first kid)? So for example, if open enrollment is in November and new benefits kick in in Jan 2017, we can try to time pregnancy with a delivery date of Jan/Feb 2017, then change to HMO during open enrollment and switch back to the HSA-based plan upon declaring a life event? I suppose it also depends on the risk we want to take upon declaring the life event (e.g. if we expect that our baby will not have any sort of issues requiring additional doctor visits that normally wouldn't be covered under an HSA-based plan).
Any ideas or strategery from those of you out there who are parents and have considered doing or have done things like this?