About Linked Benefits

Products can be “linked together” so the availability of one product is conditional upon the election of another product. This type of setup is especially common for financial products. For example, you can link an HSA to a HDHP medical plan such that the HSA is hidden until the employee selects to enroll in the HDHP medical plan. This works well because you can prevent an employee from selecting an HMO medical plan and an HSA.

In this article you'll learn:

• Common ways to link products
• Unsupported linking in Maxwell
• Things to consider when choosing linked products

Common ways to link products

Here we’ve highlighted some common ways you can link products together to make for a more intuitive shopping experience.

• Set up a product so it’s hidden until the employee selects to waive another product.
• Set up the HSA product to be hidden until the employee selects to enroll in the HSA-compatible medical product (HDHP).
• Set up the HSA product to be hidden until the employee selects to enroll in the HSA-compatible medical product (HDHP).  Once the HSA-compatible medical product is selected to enroll, the HSA product will be added to the employee’s cart. This is useful if you, as the employer, are contributing to the HSA account.
• Set up the dental/vision product to be hidden until the employee selects a certain medical product. Once the medical product is “Selected to Enroll”, add the dental/vision product to the employee’s cart (Selected to Enroll).
• Set up the pediatric dental plan to be added to the employee’s cart (Selected to Enroll) if the employee elects to enroll in a particular medical plan.
• Set up the Health Advocate or Teladoc plan to be added to the employee’s cart (Selected to Enroll) if the employee elects to enroll in a particular medical plan.

Note:

• Maxwell automatically hides an FSA product from the shopping experience if an HSA product is displayed. We will display a Limited Purpose FSA product if an HSA is product is displayed.
• You can also work with your Advisor to decide if the coverage level of the linked product should match the same coverage level of the base product, and whether or not the coverage level of the linked product can be edited. You’ll likely want to consider this when linking between medical, dental, and vision products.
• For the above scenarios where the linked product is also added to the employee’s cart automatically, you can also decide that the linked product cannot be waived (and therefore removed from the employee’s cart).

Unsupported linking in Maxwell

Maxwell does not support linking products in the following ways:

• Products cannot be set up to link together such that if the employee waives one product, another product is automatically waived.
• We don’t support the linking of three products together. For example, you cannot set up linking in such a way that if the employee selects to enroll in the HDHP, and they waive the HSA, then the FSA is displayed.

Things to consider when choosing linked products

When working with your Advisor on the setup of linked products, there are a few things that you should keep in mind:

• Linking benefits together works only for the employee shopping experience. If you're shopping on behalf of the employee on the Administrator side, the linking rules will not always apply. You'll want to make sure that you enroll the employee in each benefit as expected.
• It can be complex to link together medical and financial products with different plan years. When possible, we recommend that linked medical and financial products have the same plan year. If this is not possible, there are two important caveats to consider:
  • Example: The medical and HSA plan year is 9/1/17 - 8/31/18, and the FSA plan year is 1/1/18 - 12/31/18.
  • The products have been linked such that the FSA is hidden if the employee selects the HSA.
  • You hold one OE for medical/HSA products in August 2017, and one for FSA products in December 2017.
  • For the December OE, the system will not identify which employees are enrolled in an HSA from the previous Open Enrollment and therefore hide the FSA product. You would need to manage FSA eligibility on an individual basis.
• Linking rules only work during Open Enrollment if all the products are included in the same Open Enrollment event. If you're holding two different Open Enrollment events for a set of the linked products, they will not operate as linked.
• Extra steps are required for any new hires during the gap in effective dates. In Maxwell, employees cannot shop for both current and future products of the same type, at the same time. There is a way to allow the employee to be enrolled in the current product and select the future product, but it does require a few extra steps.