Open Enrollment - Dental Plan

[Auto-generated.] Good morning, everyone, and thank you for taking an interest to learn about how the Health Savings Account can help you and your family on your journey to build a health security account. My name is Melanie Bridges and I'm at Inspira Financial, and we are guided by our goal to help account holders thrive today, tomorrow and into retirement. We're fortunate to be helping over 1.2 million HSA members through our employer sponsored health plans. Today, I'm going to go through just high level, an agenda of the health savings account offering that you have with Cornell University. So we'll just do a little overview, get into some basic information about HSA and the contribution limits for 2026. Some tricks about planning for retirement and savings strategy as well as the investment opportunities. And then just a little bit of information about HSA and Medicare. So I'm going to get started. So what is an HSA. An HSA is a financial account with tax free status. When paying for eligible medical expenses. Contributions up to the IRS limit are pretax. When contributing through your employer's payroll. So some of the benefits are. Payroll contributions reduce your overall gross income. Affordability increases when taxes are avoided. You can save for the future. And you also, as mentioned, have an opportunity to invest. Who's eligible? Individuals enrolled in an HSA eligible health plan, commonly referred to as a high deductible health plan. So are eligible to enroll in the HSA today. You do have the opportunity to enroll in a high deductible HSA. Through Cornell University. So that would be paired with the Health Savings account. Important to note who's not eligible to contribute? Individuals enrolled in non HSA eligible health plans or health care FSA, HRA type programs receiving Medicare or Tricare. Receiving veterans affairs claimed as a dependent on someone else's tax return. Spouse contributes to FSA at the same time. Spouses may not contribute to the spouse's HSA. They can only make contributions to their own. So just a little high level about HSA at a glance. An HSA, as mentioned, can fund eligible medical expenses for the Primary health plan member who is the HSA account holder and, if applicable, a spouse or a tax dependent child. An HSA is unique because anyone can contribute to that. Account holders HSA an HSA is a lifetime account. Unlike an FSA and an HSA is a use. It is not a use it or lose it program. You can transfer other HSA funds into your Inspira HSA, and you can also transfer one IRA to an HSA is allowed per lifetime. However, that does count toward your max contribution for that year. So an HSA earns interest tax free and funds can be invested after that thousand dollars minimum cash balance is reached. So just a little bit about some of the basics. As mentioned, withdraws for qualified medical health care expenses are always tax free regardless of your age. You must be enrolled in an HSA qualified health plan to open and receive contributions after age 65. You can use withdrawals for any expense. However, they will be taxed at your normal rate. You own your HSA and it stays with you when you retire or change jobs. This is just a high level summary of HSA eligible medical expenses. Under medical, it could be things like hospital doctor visits, prescriptions, dental or vision expenses, and even certain over-the-counter products described in the IRS code listing. In addition, for an HSA, you can also, utilize it for certain Medicare insurance premiums as well as Cobra health care premiums. If you really want a complete list, you can find the list under the Help and Support Explore eligible health care expenses under your Inspira Member website. Distributions from an HSA so you can receive tax free distributions from your HSA to pay, or be reimbursed for qualified medical expenses you incur after you establish or open that health savings account. If you are no longer an eligible individual, you can still receive tax free distributions to pay or reimburse your qualified medical expenses. And just for illustrative purposes only, we have two hypothetical examples of two different reimbursement use cases that you'll see on this slide. The first example is an immediate need to pay an existing medical bill out of pocket. And the second example shows where you can withdraw funds that you built up in your account at a much future date. As long as you have qualified expenses that occur after you've established your HSA, you always want to keep proper receipts. Documentation as there was no time limit on that particular withdrawal. Each year, the IRS does establish the contribution limits that are allowed for the health Savings account. So for 2026, the limits will be $4,400 for a single, and for family, it'll be $8,750. In addition, anyone that's 55 and older can add an additional thousand dollars every year. You also have the benefit of receiving Cornell University employer contributions to your program, and whether you're an individual or family, they contribute $1,000 to the plan each year. Please note the IRS has one maximum limit per HSA, so no matter who contributes you or Cornell, the employer contributions count against your HSA max limit, so definitely plan accordingly since you're fortunate enough to have the Cornell contributions in your plan. The self family limits are indexed. Inflation annually and updated figures are released each May. And again, the 55 plus catchup amount is not indexed. It's been $1,000. And it remains that each year. couple things I'm planning for a retirement around the tax advantages of the particular health savings account. So contributions to an HSA as mentioned, are always tax free from federal income tax. States themselves do determine tax rules, and all states except for California and New Jersey also exclude HSA contributions from taxes. All funds in your account grow tax free, including interest, dividends, or capital gain. As mentioned previously, withdrawals to pay for qualified medical expenses are tax free. And this is very similar to the regulation that is utilized for flexible spending accounts as well. And HSA funds can be invested and retained for use in retirement. Tax free compound growth is a powerful benefit, and an HSA has that. Similar to other lifetime accounts such as a 403 B or an IRA. So what are some savings strategies for your HSA? You could treat your HSA like an investment account where you don't spend the funds unless they're needed for medical expenses. You could max out your investments by making the full annual contribution each year, including the extra thousand dollars for account holders age 55 and over. definitely make sure that included in that is taking the full advantage of your employer. Cornell HSA contributions. And if you wish, you could invest your savings as well. So just a couple additional strategies again, for your health savings account. If you have a big bill coming up, you might think smart and save on taxes. Contribute to and pay large eligible medical bills using your HSA. You can optimize your tax savings and retirement planning by including the HSA in your overall portfolio. And you can also leverage the auto invest feature to methodically invest over time. The IRS only allows a family HSA to be used with tax to the family members health plan law. The Affordable Care Act allows family members to remain on a family health plan until age 26. This creates the very likely event that an adult child becomes tax dependent prior to leaving the family Health plan. If so, the adult child must open and fund their own HSA. In particular with employer sponsored HSA plans. As you have, it's really critical to understand the HSA fund menu offered. Inspira recognizes the importance of having an independent investment advisor act as a fiduciary, backing our selection and ongoing monitoring of the HSA fund. Menu. In our case, we have had BNI advisors as registered investment advisors for over ten plus years. And on the right side, you'll see the diagram showing the different nature of the funds in the menu. Each has a specific role to play in an overall diversified portfolio. Once you have $1,000 in your cash balance, you can start investing. So this slide shows a screenshot of the Inspira Financial HSA website. Specifically, the HSA investment dashboard. So once you're enrolled and have the thousand dollars, you could go in and start your investment journey. You can also view and research the fund menu by clicking on the highlighted tile. There is some guidance and education on what to look for when researching a fund menu. Like hiring a good contractor. There are some common sense questions or aspects that you can review. The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority requires strict compliance in how investment performance is shown for the purposes of assuring, it's not misleading. This grid, while pretty dense, is in the required format for good reason, which is to show you historical performance over long time periods. It also shows the ticker symbol of each mutual fund and the fund expense ratio, or cost. Each option as well. This particular data is updated quarterly by the HSA product team at Inspira Financial, and the source is Morningstar Advisor Workstation. You will also find this on the Inspira website. Once you do invest in the program. Successful savers and investors have one thing in common a game plan to save and or invest and inspire offers two forms of automated investing plans to serve our account holders in this purpose. So you could set it and then just walk away where you have investments, automatically, occur as a percentage of your HSA contributions. Or you could set it up where there's a periodic sweep from your HSA to an investment account. These are all optional and totally something that you can set, at any point in time under the under your particular investment account. Really important is how HSA works or doesn't work with Medicare. So you are not eligible to enroll in or contribute to an HSA if you are enrolled in Medicare. If you have an existing HSA when you enroll in Medicare, you can still use your HSA funds to pay for eligible expenses for yourself. Your spouse, and or your tax dependents. You, however, can no longer make or receive contributions to that HSA on or after the date of your enrollment in Medicare. So it's really important to be aware of when you are enrolling in Medicare, especially if you wait to enroll, in Medicare for immediate eligibility and definitely plan accordingly. And just a little bit of additional information. As mentioned on the prior slide, there are very specific rules around Medicare and HSA plans, which is why we always want to mention these. While you can still use your HSA to pay for eligible expenses, you can again, no longer make contributions. So definitely want to look at when you may be coming Medicare eligible and determine the best time to stop those HSA contributions and again, plan accordingly. And finally, using your resources, you know, identify a financial advisor if you have one or don't have one today. Consult with that advisor on your HSA on a quarterly or annual basis. Really look at developing short and long term strategies for your contributions. And if you're investing and you can always adjust your contributions and investments as needed. So throughout the year, if you do want to make a change, you can absolutely do that with this program. I want to thank everybody for your time today, and I hope you, gained some additional knowledge around the health savings account that's offered through Cornell University. My name's Tim, and I'm going to talk to you today about your dental insurance program that's available through MetLife. What is dental insurance? Well, it's a great way to help reduce your out-of-pocket expenses for your dental checkups and procedures for you and your covered dependents. Key features of the MetLife dental plan is that there are little or no out-of-pocket expenses for cleanings, X-rays, and exams. When you use an in network dentist. You'll save between 35 and 50% when you use an in network dentist, compared to going out of network or not having dental insurance and going to a dentist just off the street. If there is, we'll handle the claims. So that means there's no paperwork for you to handle. We're going to talk about our different types of procedures in the following slides. So we're going to take a look at type A procedures. This is preventative care. These are things like your your cleanings and X-rays exams. These are the things that you typically will go to the dentist twice a year for. Type B is basic care. This is fillings and extractions. Type C major care. This is more involved items. Crowns. Dentures. Bridges. Now, one really nice feature about the MetLife dental plan is that we have a what we call a pretreatment estimate service. And that is where you can ask your dentist to submit to MetLife, for a pretreatment estimate. So if you're going to go in for a crown, that's pretty major, expense. You'd like to know what your out of pocket expense is going to be for this type of, procedure. So what the dentist does is they take your information and they submit it to MetLife. They describe the situation to us. They label or they they write out all of the claim. Numbers that their Ada codes that they're going to use in your claim, and they submit that to MetLife. It's just like if they actually did the procedure, but they label it for an estimate and then MetLife will look at it and will review it. We'll send you a copy or an estimate in the mail. But describes what's being done, what's being proposed and how much that should cost against your plan. So I encourage you to take, advantage of that. That's a free service. So please take advantage of that. The last type of coverage is type D, which is orthodontic care. Let's take a look at the plan options that you have now at Cornell University. You have two different plans. There's what's referred to as the standard dental plan. And the dental plus plan. And as you can see on the chart, we're going to break this out into the different types of services, how much the plan covers on each. So on the standard plan, in and out of network for preventative is 190% in network and 90% out of network on the D plus plan. It's 190 as well. When you move down to basic restorative services. So that's your fillings and extractions. It's 9070, in and out of network. The plus plan is 9090, in and out of network type C, these are your majors. 50% in and out of network on both plans. And then type D, that's the or the danger is covered at 50% in and out of network on both plans. Now I want to point something out on the top where you see dental standard plan. You see dental plus plan. You'll see in and out of network is a negotiated fee. What that means is MetLife has a contract with the dentists in our network, and they can only charge a specific amount for all dental procedures we label we we have a list and this is how much they can charge out of network. Those are dentists that MetLife does not have an agreement with. So we use what's called the RNC fee, which is an insurance acronym for reasonable and customary. And what that is, it's an average of what dentists charge in a given area or procedures. And it's broken out by the specific procedure. So MetLife will pay, 50% on major restorative services for out-of-network on both plans or the what at that 50% is 50% of what that reasonable and customary amount is that average that dentists are charging in that given area for that given procedure. I'm going to explain that and give you a really nice example to make, sure you understand how that works, but it's important to, to realize that's how it works. The deductible is, on the standard plan is zero, in network, $50 out of network for an individual zero. In network 150 out of network for the standard plan. And then, on the the plus plan, it has 50, in and out of network for a individual and 150 in and out of network for, families. The real difference in the plan that you'll notice the deductible, there is a difference on, the plan there at the two plans, and then you're going to see the differences come into play here. They're illustrated here. The calendar Max is 1250, $1,250 per person on the standard plan. So that's how much the plan will pay out in a given year. Once, you crossed that threshold, that it's out of pocket. The plus plan, that maximum is $5,000. So that is where you see, one of the significant differences between the two plans. The next difference is on orthodontic. Now, orthodontic, the way that works is there is a lifetime maximum on or the danger on the standard plan. It's available for children through the age of 18. So up until the the day before their 19th birthday. And that's $1,000 maximum if you upgrade to the dental plus plan, it's a $2,000 lifetime maximum. And that's available for you as an employee, your spouse or domestic partner, and then your children, through the age of 18, the two great options to consider, which one is the right one for you and your dependents? Now, let's take a look at what I was talking about earlier with the in-network dentist and the out of network dentist. So we have two, employees here. This is Anna and Beverly. They both need a crown. Both live in the basic same area, and it's going to go to an in-network dentist. Now, what we know is that dentists in the area usually charge 1361 for a crown. That's the RNC reasonable and customary amount for this this procedure however, because and it's going to take advantage of a network dentist, that dentist can only charge $694 because MetLife has negotiated with them. They're part of our network. Network. They have agreed, to only charge 694 for that, procedure. Therefore, MetLife is going to pay 50% of that, which is $347, which means Ana will have to pay the balance of 347. That's remaining. Let's contrast that with Beverly Dahm. Procedure Beverly is going to go to an out-of-network dentist that we have no agreement with, and that dentist is going to charge the 1361 MetLife. The plan pays 50%. So we're going to pay $680.50, which means that Beverly is responsible for paying the remaining balance of $680.50. So that is how deep plan works with the reasonable and customary and the in network dentist. And you can see now Ana is going to say, almost half of what, Beverly is going to have to pay because Beverly went out of network. Now, there's something also too important to realize with the out of network situation is the RNC fee is the average that's set that that is the most MetLife will pay 50% of that amount if Beverly is dentist charged more than that. 1361 is a flat 400, $1,400 per year. For example, you would add $39 on to, the total that Beverly owes, because MetLife is only going to pay 50% of that reasonable and customary. Now, which in this example is 1361. So that's how that works. I encourage you to take a look at our network. And the next question is that's great, Sam, I really want to make sure I find a network. Tell us, how do I do that. Very simple. Go to metlife.com. And on our landing page you're going to see a window that says how can we help you today. And the very first thing we'll say be find a dentist. When you click on that it's going to ask you to choose your network. And we have a variety of networks that are available. What I'd like you to do is choose the PDP plus network that's over on the right hand side. And that is our largest network of dentists. There's just under half a million dentists available across the country. The nice thing about it is you can search, your area for dentists. When you pull up the search, it will provide you with some great information. It'll tell you where they are, even if they're in, multiple locations. So it'll let you know that it will let you know the languages that they speak. It will let you know their specialties. And there's also a link to Yelp reviews. So you can take a look and find out what people are saying about this particular, dental provider so you can find one that fits the the needs of you and your family. Also, if you have, preferred dentist and your spouse has a different preferred dentist, that is more than okay, you can have one for yourself. Really, one for any, you can utilize it for any covered dependent. They can all use different, dental providers. So that's how that works. We like to help you make smarter choices when it comes to your oral health. And that's why we developed the oral fitness library and it's said every time you do oral library.com what this is, it's a composite of, 1500 documents about dental questions. So if you have a question about, a certain type of procedure or I remember when my wife and I utilized this years ago when we were wondering what at what point should you bring your new child to the dentist? We looked up that information on this website. So take a look at that. It's a great repository to find some good information from a trusted source. We have a website called My Benefits and a mobile app, that's available. And what these allow you to do is allow you to interact with MetLife. The MetLife My Benefits website is a portal where you can set up a profile with us. You'll, log on to it, and it's WW dot net Live.com backslash my benefits. And here, it will ask you to load in your name. And then you're going to put Cornell University as your employer. And from there you can create a profile here you can download an a ID card. So you see that on the left hand side we do not send out, printed ID cards. They are not necessary at the dentist. The dentist will look you up, with your plan information, you always want to make sure that when the dentist is looking you up there searching by the employees, information. Not your spouses or domestic partners information or your, dependent children's information. We have you, as the employee. We have your data. So everybody will be linked to you. But if you'd like to have an ID card, you can, create one there and print one out. You can also see information about your claims. And if probably will never need this. But if you needed a claim form for one reason or another, that's where you can, find it. You can also find a dental provider on this website, as well. So there's a couple of different ways to get to, finding a dentist as well. We all have our phones in our pocket and really like to use those. So we developed a mobile app. It's the MetLife US app. It's available in, Google Play in the App Store. And once you set up a profile on my benefits, you can then download the app. And, it basically is the My Benefits website in your pocket. You can download a, digital ID card and put that in your, your wallet on Apple. I'm not sure what it's called on the, other devices, but I'm sure it's a very similar, function. So it's a great way to have the MetLife information available to you at your fingertips. That's my presentation. If you have questions beyond what I've presented today, there's a couple of great ways to get in touch with us. The my benefits website, as I mentioned, just be there. can also visit our metlife.com backslash n info backslash. Cornell. That website will take you to a microsite that's specifically designed for Cornell's, plans with MetLife. And then if you have questions, call us at one 800, get met a we have representatives available 8 a.m. to 9 p.m. eastern time Mondays through Fridays, and then 7 to 10 Eastern Time on Saturdays and Sundays. Thank you for your time. Have a wonderful day.