Calling all Federal Gov’t Employees… let’s talk benefits

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:We use BCBS for medical and it's been great. We recently added GEHA-High for dental. I found NO ONE who would accept the BCBS "dental plan" that was offered along with medical. I got tired of receptionists explaining why BCBS dental was so bad they quit accepting it. We pay $50/wk for dental though, so it's pretty expensive. In January we'll be 2 yrs into their plan, and will qualify for braces for DS13. Finally.

Be careful though. We paid $50/wk for 24 months and ended up only getting $1500 credit toward his braces. For a family of 5, his share of the annual premium was $1040. Although that saved us $460, it did make us wait 2 years before starting treatment. In hindsight, I wish I'd sat down and done the math to see that it negated waiting. Now DS is almost 14 and will be in high school when he gets braces. Most people I've talked to say their provider has a 2 yr waiting period before you can start treatment, and only pay $1000- $1500 max per child.

PS.. some of the ortho's we've consulted will offer a cash discount if you don't have insurance. Ours knocked $750 off the price of $4500 if we started now vs. waiting for the new year benefits to start. In that case, we threw away about $300 in premiums. I'm finding their prices to be quite negotiable...

[jsteele]

This thread has been repeatedly hit by automated spammers (I have deleted the messages). But, since they keep coming back to this thread, I'm going to lock the thread.