Hi. We are about to add a working spouse premium (spousal surcharge) for spouses of employees that are working and are eligible for health benefits at their employers. However, we have a lot of married couples that work here for our company. For the married couples with both spouses working here, do we apply the spousal surcharge? Some of them have one spouse full-time and the other working on an ESO (enhanced salary option) basis, meaning they have elected to be paid more for waiving certain benefits.

The idea behind the working spouse premium is to encourage working spouses to use their own employer's plan, and not ours. This wouldn't be accomplished by applying the premium to couples with both spouses working for us. But are we violating any laws if we don't apply the premium to everyone with a working spouse that is benefits eligible?

We do not have that policy yet but we do have many employees that the employee is a spouse and an employee of our company. We encourage each employee to take single coverage and one of them elect for the children.

I definitely would not offer an incentive for waiving coverage to an employee who has a spouse within your company and you are providing coverage. If you continue to do that, then yes I think the surcharge should definitely apply. You are robbing Peter to pay Paul so to speak. That doesn't make sense.