I am wondering if anyone knows what significant changes in coverage means. We recently switched from an almost 100% coverage with no deductable to a $200 deductable and 80/20 coverage due to an increase in costs. We have an employee who wants to drop her spouse from coverage since her spouse can now get better coverage at a lower rate given our drop in coverage and rise in rates.

thanks for any insights to this!

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KEH

I think that if this employee wanted to drop all coverage due to a significant increase or change in premium/coverage that would probably be ok, but to just drop her spouse, I'm not sure if that would be consistent with the reason for the change. There is one status change that says "change in insurance attributable to the spouses employment." But I don't think this falls into that category, unless the spouse has just changed jobs? We leave the determination of "significan increase" up to the employer to decide because there is no IRS definition for it. Hope this helps.