I have a damaged knee that doesn't want to heal and I'm planning to have surgery on it in the coming months. Thankfully my current individual health-insurance policy was continued into next year, but it has a $5k deductible, which I'm probably going to blow through for the surgery.

At the same time, the ACA is also taking effect, so I was wondering if it would make financial sense to sign up for gold-level insurance through healthcare.gov to help cover the deductible of my current policy. Would this even work? Can I have two individual insurance policies at the same time? Probably not from the same company, but what about from two different companies?

11/12/2013 3:04:40 PM

^I don't know the answer to your question, but I have a very similar question and I'm going to semi-hijack your thread to pose it here. I imagine if someone knows the answer to your question, he/she would know the answer to mine as well.

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My employer's out-of-pocket cost for insurance premiums for me, wife, and kid amounts to around $230 per month for a high-deductible HPSP plan (and employer contributes around $1300 to the HSA). My wife's employer essentially has that same plan, but has 0 premiums, and they contribute $3000 per year. We've been on her plan for the last year, but blew through what was in the HSA pretty quickly as she's on some pricey diabetes medications, and mine are about $100 per month.

If she signs up for the same family coverage plan, and I sign up for just the individual plan, i'm looking at about $30 per month for the premium, and the same contribution to my HSA. The HSA contribution alone more than covers my premium + the cost of my meds.

Question is whether that's legit to do? If I went to the doctor, I'd still give them my wife's insurance card so all of our health services would contribute to the same family deductible. I would just use my HSA debit card to pay for stuff and that's about it. I see nothing in the materials that state that i can't enroll if i'm enrolled in a spouse's health plan.

11/12/2013 3:32:28 PM

LS, in general, yes, you can have two different health insurance policies. You can take usually out as many insurance policies as you want against anything, as long as you can find someone to insure it and you can afford the premiums. You'll have to meet the deductibles on both plans individually, IIRC, for both plans to start paying out, but you could just meet it on one and have that one pay out.

11/13/2013 11:01:17 PM

^^i think its legit to do... But the only real caveat is going to be total HSA contributions. Whether the employer contributes or you contribute, married persons cap out at 6550 I think. At least I'm understanding you're trying to basically pay $30 a month to get $1500 in return from your employer.

I don't see why you can't, and you'd have the luxury of an extra insurance policy on yourself. You may be able to leverage that into a reduction in your health care costs. Someone else might have to answer about the filing two claims....

11/14/2013 1:28:43 AM

This may be of interest to the two of you... But my mom mentioned she was covered under two plans, but somehow was responsible for more out of pocket expenses, due to the way the deductibles applied. The benefits administrator said he situation was uncommon, but could happen.

Unfortunately, details were not very clear... But it would be something to research when coinsurance applies, etc

11/16/2013 1:42:03 PM