Health Insurance - Luther,OK

It does depend on the plan, and if the secondary plan also has a deductible then yes you will need to pay it.

You will have to check with the specific language on both policies. My husband is covered on his policy and also on mine. He has to pay his co-pay (which is more than my copay) and then once the claim is processed by his company, we have to provide the EOB (explanation of benefits) to my insurance company and then they pay--usually making a payment to the doctor and then issuing me a check for the difference in the copays. Some times it is a hassle to get a doctor's office to file the extra claim. Now, at the hospital, since he had two good insurance plans, they did not require any payment. The hospital said they would see what was covered by both policies and then send a bill for any remainder.

Like the other moms have said it will depend on what your policies say. However, I use to work in medical billing at a doctor's office, and I can tell you what usually happens. Most of the timed the secoday insurance did not have a deductible to be met. If this is the case, it will most likely cover your primary's deductible and copays. If your secondary does have a deductible, your charges will be applied to you primary deductible, and then your secondary will come in and say ok lets cover that, but if you haven't met your secondary deductible yet, then the amount will also be applied to that. You will only pay for the charges once. It just gets applied to both deductibles.

You'll have to check with your doctor's office. They'll probably still want the copay up front at the time of the visit.

Usually the secondary insurance won't pay until after the primary insurance has paid their portion. After both insurances have been processed, you might get a small portion of the copay back.

You'll also want to check with the doctor's office as far as the billing goes. There's a good chance that they'll send the original bill to the primary insurance as they've been doing. It may be your responsibility to file a claim for the secondary insurance.

Please know what your "secondary" insurance will cover on coordination of benefits. Some secondary companys do not pay anything if all the "allowable" amount has been paid by by the primary. If this is true then you may be wasting money paying for a secondary coverage. With the birth of my first son Secondary coverage was great and I paid very little but by the time I had my second son and still the same insurance the "rules" had changed and I had to pay more out of pocket than expected. I don't know who makes the "rules" but just be aware of what your policy covers and how it covers. Most people do not understand the lingo and just end up paying the bill as it comes. I knew about insurance and saved myself $4000 because the hospital forget to write off the contractual obligations they had with the insurance company. I had to do a 3 party call with the insurance company rep, the hospital billing and me to get it straightened out. It was probably a simple misstake or an inexperienced billing clerk but it's scary to get a bill like that.

You need to read the policy for each plan. It will depend on how they are worded. Some policies pay straight cash which you could use for the deductible on your primary plan, others only pay a proportion of the costs and let your other policy pay the rest. I would talk to your agent or HR representative and then ask for a policy booklet or policy certificate to confirm what they told you.

read the terms. I think that you are still responsible for the deductible and the secondary is just in case, but I could be wrong.

It all depends on how your policies are written.
By secondary insurance, do you mean supplemental?
Some supplemental policies will pay what the primary insurance doesn't cover, including deductibles. But, that's not always the case.
If it's a matter of "coordination of benefits" such as you're covered under your policy and also covered under your husband's policy, you need to talk to the carriers to find out how it will be paid.
If you don't have a policy that will pay your deductibles, you will have to pay them.
Your doctor's office likely just bills so they probably wouldn't know the answer to your question. Call the 800 number on the back of your ID cards for customer service and ask them how it will work.
Like I said, it depends on what type of secondary insurance you're talking about.
I'm a health insurance agent. So, you haven't given enough info to really help you out.

Best wishes!