mroberts

pudding: standardly, it's up to the employer to decide when an employee is terminated once they are disabled. many employers decide to terminate an employee the day he or she is eligible for long-term disability. however, i've seen employers terminate employees the day of disability if it is an apparent long term claim or even after one or two months. now, as far as texas goes, i'm not aware of any law mandating when an employer can or can not terminate a disabled employee. i've never heard of any in any other state as well, but my expertise on this subject would only be limited to a handful of states. as far as being denied information on your ltd plan, that's a whole separat issue you need to take up with your employer. if you are terminated and are worried about medical insurance since you mentioned you have diabetes, then COBRA the medical.

Go to www.cobrahelp.com This should be a decent place to start. If you're looking for a consultant to work with you on anything, don't hesitate to let me know. Just send me an email.

I agree with gburns. Also, studies have shown that it all balances out when it comes to FSAs. Not too many people come up with a scheme at the beginning of the year to work the FSA plan. As a matter of fact, most employees have no idea what happens to their funds devoted to an FSA when they terminate, so I would say that it's not something worth insuring even if you could insure it.

MSMA: If you are more specific I could possibly help. Feel free to send me an email and we could possibly discuss. Thanks!

I don't believe there will be any documentation that's going to specifically mention TMJ as being a covered expense. However, it is a recognized medical condition that is not considered cosmetic or not necessary to treat so it should be allowed under your FSA.

I actually worked for a previous consulting firm that worked with an indian nation with respect to self-insuring the medical and dental plans. This is by no means unusual. The key is to ensure that you have the bare minimum number of lives to self insure. I place that threshhold around 300. You could self-insure with less than 300 lives, but it starts to get risky at that point. If you have a couple of cancer claims, good luck getting stop loss insurance the following year. I would love to discuss your situation in more detail if you'd like. Just send me an email, which can be obtained by looking at my profile. Take Care!