[quote=UCGal]
I think the factor was adult ages. I did some what if’ing.. and it appears my husband’s age was a bigger factor. Employer coverage doesn’t include ages of adults in the pricing. (It can’t – age discrimination, etc.) ACA and privately contracted insurance considers age and smoking status.
We’ll have a gap of one year between when COBRA runs out and he qualifies for Medicare… so we’ll have to budget extra for that year. But we can make the adjustments we need with planning.[/quote]
That bolded part isn’t exactly right. Many employer plans are age-rated. It is allowed. It’s that many HR/EB departments will insist on non-age-rated policies, for a number of reasons (none of them evil), and most large carriers will comply. So premium quotes are based on age-rated-rates, and then divided equally by the actual number of covered employees. So what happens when COBRA becomes an issue is that older employees end up with lower premiums than in the individual market and younger employees end up with sometimes much higher rates than the individual market. You’re probably a beneficiary of the former.
