Since he signed this form in January or early February, he’s had my health insurance bill sent to him in a named envelope and then today my refund for my new glasses was paid into his bank account not mine.
Surely this is completely illegal? I’ve complained in writing to them .
But to be honest I’m fuming 😤
What would you all do?
- Who pays the premium on your insurance and from what account?
- Check your documents, have you ever submitted any thing with his account details on it
- Have you actually instructed them to pay the refund to a specific account
Tom
I guess this is what is happening for you?
If you do not like it then just ask them to put you on 2 separate contracts and manage that independently.
K
We are all with the same company, they have his bank details because they have to legally pay any refunds to him.
I am the main account holder , and everything has been sent to me for the last few years untill lately.
The glasses were mine, I submitted the claim for the money back and scanned it from my phone app, wrote a message from me and then he got the refund!!
He is now receiving bills for me . It’s sexiest really.
This seems to be a contradiction.
If you’re the main account holder then the account is basically in your name surely. So why would they have to pay any refunds to him on a separate account?
Which insurance company is this?
Probably some system update or whatever has got that bank account as yours both. You talk about confidentiality breach but about what? Did they tell him a diagnosis or something?
I would honestly not let stuff like this gt bigger than it is - just am admin error somewhere that a phone call/email/letter should sort.
Which insurance is this? There was an article in Bon a Savoir this month about one insurance insisting all holders in the family just use one account etc and how it turned out its not legal- I think it was Assura but not sure.
Have you had to submit a tax return yet? If a joint one, it's in the husband's name, with the wife second (and I don't think you can change the order).
For the tax forms thing, it probably varies by canton whether husband’s name is first or primary taxpayer is first. By default, the husband is assumed to be the highest earner; if this is not the case, then there is a form that you can fill out to reverse the designations. This is important, because it changes which tax rate is applied to whose earnings.
And you are right that there is a whiff of everyday sexism in all of this, but it is also how the system is set up here for historical reasons. Frankly, there are too many other important issues around sexism and money, like pay parity and pension provisions, to be concerned about to worry too much about the order of names.
It’s an administrative procedure. The premiums are paid from your husband’s account and the refunds go back to the same account. Expecting the company’s automated system to know that you are special and they must handle it differently is nonsense.
The obvious solution is for you to set a completely separate policy, pay it from your own bank account and like magic the refunds will go into your account. Of course you’ll loose any benefits of a group/family policy but that is your choice.
Briefly check with spouse that we're both on the same page about this (and why it might matter, depending how we've privately agreed to arrange our finances).
Find out from the insurance whether or not we enjoy any "couples" or "family" discount, and are thereby regarded as one unit. If yes, ask whether our premiums would go up if we separated the account into two separate ones.
If there is a financial difference, decide whether that extra cost to separate the premiums is worth it (which is might be, for a particular couple) and if so, which spouse will bear the higher costs or how they will be split.
Once I had all that information, discuss with spouse and decide what we wanted to do.
If we then, being informed, decide to run the two accounts separately, then write a polite, factual, non-complaint letter (with all reference numbers) to the insurance company, stating that husband's info is ... and wife's info is..., and that they should please treat these fully separately, including for the billing. If there are children, specify whether these will now run under the mother's or the father's account. Both spouses should sign this letter - not because it is law, but because it is very likely to speed up the process.
Tom