Double the benefit, double the fun

This isn't exactly your question, but I'd think that it would be most cost effective for each of you to just be insured by your own employer. Employers usually pay a lot more of the premium for employees than they do for spouses. Just another option to look at.

You're in the US, right? Me too. My family has double coverage. Your insurance is your primary coverage; your husband's is your secondary coverage. His insurance is his primary coverage; yours is secondary for him. These rules are dead simple clear. For most of our working lives, we have had double covrage on the same insurance plan. This was fantastic, as it completely eliminated any deductibles or co-payments. Even for prescription medications. I felt like a queen in the pharmacy. Last year we had to split to two plans in order to cover a child at a college where our main insurance plan does not provide care. It is more complicated with two plans; I hate having copayments. We at home use our main plan. College kid uses the new one while at school, and the old one when at home. I believe the old one is now secondary for her, but the coordination of benefits is something insurance companies are used to. They have a whole department for it. So it is working fine for us.

For things like pregnancy and catastrophe, double insurance can be very good. For every day things? I did this for about 6 months, because I had my own BCBS health policy before I got an office job. Then the office job covered me. Every office visit, both insurance companies argued with me about which was primary. I listed the BCBS as primary, because I had it first, I paid it out of pocket, and I liked the coverage better. The work insurance covered whatever BCBS didn't cover. Well, BCBS wanted to be secondary and pay less. And the work insurance loved the idea of being secondary. It was a huge headache, but I got it sorted out in some satisfactory way, which I can't remember. It didn't last long because I was only at that job for 9 months. until I decided that throwing myself over a railing and getting hospitalized would be better than dealing with the mean soul sucking bitchy manager for another ten minutes. So I got in my car and went home, in tears. It was the first time I ever walked out on a job, and looking back I can't even remember if I had canceled the original health insurance or not. But that visceral rationalization of hurting myself, and my immediate steps to avoid that are very vivid.

We have dine this for years and it's absolutely worth it for us. We thought of ourselves as pretty healthy people-then my husband's psoriasis got worse, needed expensive meds, then he was diagnosed with Crohn's. His medication, about $2K a month, costs us nothing, as my insurance picks up what his doesn't. Zero hassle for us. We have children, also generally healthy-until our toddler ended up in the hospital for 11 days this March. Bill for hospitalization alone was 46K. We paid zero. We've never had any significant trouble re benefits coordination.

We double-insured my wife during her pregnancy and delivery earlier this year. I don't recall the exact figures, but it saved us several thousand dollars.

We did this for optical insurance and it was AWESOME. You can get new frames every year or contacts and frames (or sunglasses and frames etc.)

It would depend specifically on what type of insurance plans they are (HMO, PPO, etc...). In some cases it might make sense if you know ahead of time that the secondary insurance provider would pick up what the primary ins provider didn't pay. As a rule though, it's not worth the effort of the added expense on your parts.

Not only does it depend on what kind of insurance it is, it also depends on what the plan itself says. Sometimes you can have a "primary" insurance and a "secondary" insurance. Sometimes, though, companies or plans have policies were you can't. What you might want to do is ask one or both of your companies if they would be willing to give you a stipened for electing not to be insured (at my company, if I had other insurance coverage, I would get $100 per paycheck). They might not do it now but might consider it if someone asked.

Back about 20 years ago, my wife and I double covered each other, and it turned out to be a good thing, as she got an extra day in the hospital after our daughter was born because of it (like her plan covered her first, then mine kicked in and it had the option for an extra day). However, they (whoever "they" are) passed a rule that you could no longer have that kind of double coverage, for medical at least (we still do it with dental). Not sure why, or if it's a local or statewide rule, or what. You might want to check with your HR dept and find out if it's even an option for you or not. For the kids, we just looked at the costs and ended up insuring them under my employer, as ikt was a better deal for adding dependents.