Health Insurance for Nanny
Archived Q&A and Reviews
Sept 2013
Re: Pay and benefits for live-in nanny
If you don't buy health insurance for her, you will give her an incentive to not seek medical care when she is sick. She will continue to work with your kids, and they will get sick. What if she falls and breaks her leg ? If you can afford to do this at all, you can afford to pay for medical care. I paid for my Nanny's kaiser plan.
Oct 2002
I am looking for information on health insurance that I could get for my nanny. If you have either looked into this or are currently providing a policy for your nanny I would be interested in knowing what insurance companies you are using, how much it typically costs and what types of coverage most people are providing. Thanks.
We have provided health insurance for two nannies. Both Kaiser and Blue Cross of California have individual plans. My current 30 y.o. nanny has Kaiser for $150/mo, not cheap, but it covers everything. Blue Cross has multiple plans, some a little cheaper, and there is more choice in MDs, but for the same price you have large co-pays. If your nanny is 22 or so, it costs about 50% less, and 50% more if in her 50's. I got all the information off their websites, don't have the addys but Google should find it for you. Benefits are not taxed, so our nannies have preferred health benefits to a raise- we offered it after 6 months on the job. Kate
We helped our nanny sign up with Kaiser because the price was comparable to other insurance programs, and it is comprehensive and very straight forward - no hassles with selecting a primary care provider etc: just go. Prices are on their website, specific to age (and maybe zip code). It has been a good experience. Dominic
I just went through the process of getting health insurance for my nanny. We researched it and ended up with the Blue Cross PPO 5000. This provides for a 30% copay on office visits with no deductible (usually works out to around $25 copay per visit, which she pays), prescription drug benefit of $10 for generic and $35 for brand (with the brand subject to a $750 deductible), and a $5000 deductible for major hospitalization. It also has ''healthy check centers'' where she can go for mammograms and other well check type events at a reduced rate (I think around $35 to $50 for most services). The idea for us was that we wanted to cover her routine illnesses and to cap her financial exposure if she were to have a major accident or become seriously ill. If she became seriously ill, she could come up with the $5K through family or with our help and then everything would be covered from that point on. The monthly cost for her age group is $88. Compare this to Kaiser at $275 for all of their services. As an employer, we felt this made more sense. You can look on Blue Cross website under individual health plans but I would use an insurance broker because they are familiar with all of the plans and will be able to advise you what one is best for your situation. We used Kay Smith, 650-345-8105, kasmith729 at aol.com. She handled all of the details and helped me get it set up so the payment is automatically deducted from my checking every month. Good Luck. Shannon
Give Sherri Mello a call at Myers Stevens at 415-543-4040. They are insurance brokers and can give you lots of information about different companies. Good luck! Juliette
We [2 families sharing a nanny] purchased insurance for our nanny's family through the Alameda Alliance for Health, which provides for families who make just a little too much to qualify for Healthy Families. I think the cut-off for HF is 250% of the Federal poverty Guidelines [currently $37,500 for a family of 3 - info available on the web], and the AAH covers between that amount and a few thousand more. They are also on the web. By the way, it's only $50 per month for her family of 3, and she's says it's a very good program. -Jean
If you do not own a small business then you will need to get your nanny an individual health plan. I suggest going to kaiser's website at kp.org. Then goto ''Our health plans'' and click on the link for ''individual or family'' health plans. These plans are for full coverage with Kaiser HMO. Rates start around $125 depending on the individual. The Kaiser HMO is really good for standard health care, check-ups, prescriptions, preventive health, drug treatment etc. They have a good facility in Oakland and low copays (perfect for a low income nanny). Basically a good choice for young people. HMOs are problematic if you need a particular specialist however most people would never know the difference between an HMO and a more expensive PPO. Kaiser may have an ''open enrollemt'' which means you can only join certain times of the year. joe g
March 2002
We employ a nanny for our son and would like to set up a decent health insurance program for her. Would anyone have advice on how to go about this? Also, what percentage should we pay/ what percentage is fair to expect our nanny to pay? Does anyone know if some of our costs can be written off on taxes? Thanks very much for any advice on this! -Maggie
Kaiser, for just one person, is fairly inexpensive (close to $100 a month) As a nanny, I would be happy if my employer covered half!
Our 2 nanny-sharing families are also trying to buy health insurance for our boys' babysitter, and after some considerable research, have discovered that for her situation, the Alameda Alliance for Health's Family Care plan looks like the best option. A primary consideration when choosing a plan is the babysitter's income, and based on that, the options [that we found, at least] were either Private [too expensive for us], California's Healthy Families [she and her husband, together, made too much], Kaiser's low-income plan [it's on their website - called Kaiser Cares or something], or Alameda County's Family Care program, which suited our babysitter's needs. She has a husband and a young son, and their combined income is just above the limit for Healthy Families [200% of the Federal Poverty Level, or about $42,000 for a family of 3] making them ineligible for that, but right for the County Program. It's $50 per month for the whole family to be covered, and if it's an individual with no kids, then they also have an option for that, although I think it's a little more expensive. I'm sorry I don't have the phone numbers with me, but they all have web-sites and are listed in the books.
We pay for the full health insurance of our nanny in lieu of the bonuses we would have given her. It costs more than the bonuses ($119.00/month through Kaiser) but we felt that having health insurance was vitally important. The nanny is employed by my husband's company which also provides her with a 401k plan. So, in a way, she gets her bonus after all. Net net, the tax issues work out well because she is an employee of his company. If you have a small business, you might consider consulting your CPA about putting the nanny on the payroll.