Which health insurance plan should people choose if facing the choice during open enrollment season: An indemnity plan or a high-deductible health insurance plan?
Yahoo Finance's Molly Moorhead joined Robert 'Bob' Powell on Decoding Retirement to answer this question, discuss open enrollment season, and provide her thoughts on the importance of HSAs.
Indemnity plan (decoded)
An indemnity plan, also known as a fee-for-service plan, is a health insurance plan that pays a set amount for qualified medical services. The plan pays a fixed amount, regardless of the total bill for the service. The insured pays the rest of the bill, which can vary depending on the provider's charges.
HDHP (decoded)
An HDHP is a high-deductible health insurance plan. This means that you pay more out-of-pocket for medical expenses before your insurance kicks in. However, HDHPs typically have lower monthly premiums than traditional insurance plans. HDHPs can be combined with an HSA. This allows you to save money tax-free for medical expenses. For this reason, HDHPs are often called HSA-eligible plans.
"That's the problem with HSAs being tied to your current health plan. Because when you're making that choice, you're thinking, what are my health expenses going to be in the coming year? And that's really kind of disconnected from what your health expenses are going to be in retirement," Moorhead says. "So I think the ideal to me would be pick the plan that serves your needs the most right now."
Yahoo Finance's Decoding Retirement is hosted by Robert Powell, and produced by Zach Faulds.
Find more episodes of Decoding Retirement at https://www.cerveza-artesanal.com/videos/series/decoding-retirement.
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Editor's note: This post was written by Zach Faulds.