Deduct Health Care Premiums for Family When Employer Only Pays for Me
"You can deduct what you pay for your own and your family's health insurance regardless of whether it is subsidized by your employer or not, as well  as all other medical and dental expenses for your family, as an itemized deduction on Schedule A of Form 1040, but only to the extent that the  total exceeds 7.5% of your Adjusted Gross Income (AGI) (10% on tax returns for year 2013 onwards). As pointed out in KeithB's comment, you cannot deduct any health insurance premium (or other medical expense) that was paid for out of pre-tax dollars, nor indeed can you deduct any medical expense to the extent that  it was paid for by the insurance company directly to hospital or doctor (or reimbursed to you) for a covered expense; e.g. if the insurance company reimbursed you $72 for a claim for a doctor's visit for which you paid $100 to the doctor, only $28 goes on Schedule A to be added to the amount that you will be comparing to the 7.5% of AGI threshold, and the $72 is not income to you that needs to be reported on Form 1040. Depending on other items on Schedule A, your total itemized deductions might not exceed the standard deduction, in which case you will likely choose to use the standard deduction. In this case, you ""lose"" the deduction for medical expenses as well as all other expenses deductible on Schedule A. Summary of some of the discussions in the comments   Health care insurance premiums cannot be paid for   from HSA accounts (IRS Pub 969, page 8, column 2, near   the bottom) though there are some exceptions.  Nor   can health care insurance premiums be paid from an   FSA account (IRS Pub 969, page 17, column 1, near the top). If you have a business on the side and file a Schedule C as a self-employed person, you can buy medical insurance for that business's employees (and their families too, if you like) as an employment benefit, and pay for it out of the income of the Schedule C business, (thus saving on taxes). But be aware that if you have employees other than yourself in the side business, they would need to be covered by the same policy too.  You can even decide to pay all medical expenses of your employees and their families too (no 7.5% limitation there!) as an employment benefit but again, you cannot discriminate against other employees (if any) of the Schedule C business in this matter.  Of course, all this money that reduced your Schedule C income does not go on Schedule A at all. If your employer permits your family to be covered under its health insurance plan (for a cost, of course), check whether you are allowed to pay for the insurance with pre-tax dollars.  The private (non-Schedule C) insurance would, of course, be paid for with post-tax dollars.  I would doubt that  you would be able to save enough money on taxes to make up the difference between $1330/month and $600/month, but it might also be that the private insurance policy covers a lot less than your employer's policy does.  As a rule of thumb, group insurance through an employer can be expected to offer better coverage than privately purchased insurance. Whether the added coverage is worth the additional cost is a  different matter.  But while considering this matter, keep in mind that privately purchased insurance is not  always guaranteed to be renewable, and a company might decline to renew a policy if there were a large number of claims. A replacement policy might not cover pre-existing conditions for some time (six months? a year?) or maybe even permanently.  So, do consider these aspects as well.  Of course, an employer can also change health insurance plans or drop them entirely as an employment benefit (or you might quit and go work for a different company), but as long as the employer's health plan is in existence, you (and continuing members of your family) cannot be discriminated against and denied coverage under the employer's plan."
First of all, the company will pay the money for the insurance, do not be afraid. They have to pay IF 1) the insurance premium was paid every month and 2) there was not a false declaration of health when the contract was signed 5 or 10 years ago. It normally takes between 1 month and 4 months to settle an insurance contract. Your case might take a little longer. Second, the insurance company admit that you are the beneficiary, so the money will eventually come to you. What they say is that you need someone in charge, a trustee or a curatorship to handle the money in your name. Why? Because you have a mental health team in charge of you. Be patient, and... Third, start by talking to someone in charge in your mental health team or the people you see. What you need is someone acting as a trustee for you. You need to go and seek free legal aid. Depending on your country or state of residence.  I cannot help you more than that. You will have the money, eventually in a few months, but you need to find a trustee, a guardian as soon as possible. Someone in your family could easily do it for you ? "Evaluate if the Rs 5 million term insurance is sufficient. Typically the term insurance provided by employer is in the range of 1 to 3 times the gross. Generally one should be covered in the range of 5 to 10 times the Gross. The sooner you start the lesser the premium and you can get insured for a large amount for a long duration at very nominal rate.  NOTE:  You can also buy a health insurance for your father, note these typically come at high cost, generally if over 70 years of age, 25% is the premium amount and 25% as co-pay. So if your dad doesn't fall ill once in 3 years, its a loss making proposition. Edit: Accident insurance best take is along with rider on term plan. Additional Health insurance is a good idea and helps if you are in between jobs. Plus the new company health insurance can reject a particular treatment as ""Pre-Existing"". i.e. certain illness [in certain plans] require one to have coverage for 3 years before the claim for it can be covered." "Well, they probably don't offer health insurance at all.  That means they will have to pay for administrative costs, which are likely negligible for a company that already has HR infrastructure.  But the kicker is this:  ""employees may not be forced to pay more than 9.5 percent of their family income ""  So...if you are paying a someone $2.13 an hour plus tips out of a tip pool (let's say that ends up at $10 an hour -- probably a little high but it will suffice)  at 40 hours a week:  $1700/mo - SS and taxes...lets say $1500 and they get a $450/month PPO plan (employee only), the company is looking at paying $300/mo per employee.  More for those with families.  Since they are only paying employees $362/mo out of their own coffers since the remainder are tips, their labor costs increase by about 70-80%.  Of course, this only happens to employers that treat their employees like garbage.  Personally, I'd wonder if what they are doing with their tip based wage is even legal.  Sure doesn't seem like it should be." "&gt; The 20 million people added to healthcare is a number they boast and brag about when they dont realize (from a study im having a hard time reproducing so take it with a grain of salt) roughly 65% of those people could afford health insurance prior to the aca just chose not to buy and because of the mandate were forced to.   Yes, *that* is one of the reasons I supported the ACA. The problem of rising health care costs, as one of the sources I linked to showed, is the ""free rider"" problem. Too many people walk into the emergency room uninsured, or *under*-insured. They get emergent care that they are not covered for, and the hospitals jack up the prices greatly in the hopes of getting a larger portion reimbursed by Medicare. Now, who pays for that Medicare reimbursement? You and I, of course. The taxpayers do. And we pay a heavily artificially inflated version of that price. This is the most jacked up form of universal health care, but that is what the GOP if fighting to reinstall.   &gt; I also know that for me health insurance prior to the ACA was significantly lower roughly 50% cheaper and that doesnt even begin to touch the hikes a lot of people i know saw.   I have no doubt this is true, and another reason that I support the ACA - not because it equates to higher prices for you, but because for the first time it made younger adults actually responsible for their medical bills. When the ACA was enacted, we had a guy in our company who was about 23 years old. He saw his insurance costs go up by 50%. We covered is insurance increases, because we supported him. However, what we found when we went back and compared the insurance that he had with the insurance that he has is that the first policy didn't cover anything but the most extreme circumstances. It was a junk policy, that left the taxpayer liable for a lot of stuff - ambulatory response, x-rays, medicine, etc. There was nothing in there for preventative care - which as the study I linked showed, greatly impacted health for the worse.   &gt; They have some of the lowest income tax rates in the world.  Again, Switzerland has *lower* tax rates than the US, but they don't even crack the [top 20 when it comes to countries with low taxes](http://www.businessinsider.com/wef-countries-with-the-lowest-tax-rates-in-the-world-2015-10/#2-qatar-113-qatar-edges-out-the-regions-other-oil-rich-state-to-come-in-second-place-but-still-loses-out-to-one-other-nation-17). Most of the countries in that list are relatively poor countries to the average citizen, with weak infrastructure. Many of those countries are monarchies in which the ruling family controls the number one source of income - oil - so there is no taxes, they just skim their money right off the top. These are not countries that we would want to live/retire in.   Switzerland succeeds with low taxes because they have a very efficient (universal) health care system, and they have almost no military to fund.   &gt; While i do not own my own company or have anything to do with R&amp;D i can for a fact disprove your theory  Again speaking in absolutes. This denotes that you can disprove every situation possible to show that government is worse than commercial. As I said, if you thought that before you entered my industry, you quickly see the flip side of that coin.   Your example is a perfect example of that. So you work in construction, an industry in which commercial is notorious for *underbidding* a contract (whether to government or to private), and then running into *unexpected* overages that cause the job to go over schedule, over budget. These companies succeed because there are a very small number of providers that can accomplish certain jobs, so they tend to stick around (just like the big banks) even though they aren't the best.   Its not like the government just sits around and takes it. I know of at least [one federal contractor who went to federal prison](https://www.justice.gov/archive/usao/id/news/2012/sept/large09192012.html) for fraudulently winning contracts in my part of the country.   &gt; The private sector will always have a need to innovate and that need will always be filled with or without the government the only difference is the private sector wont keep throwing money at an unsustainable rate like the government does because if they dont see results its not worth funding.  And this is *why* the government can succeed in areas that commercial cannot. This is why government got the first people on the moon, not commercial. This is why we have already sent missions to mars, whereas Musk is going to make those trips more efficient. It is because government has tremendous resources that they can throw at a problem. Even the richest man in the world will run out of money before he can solve the big problems. As I told a poster earlier, JIEDDO spent over $1T working on the IED problem in Iraq / Afghanistan. This was the number one killer of our troops. There were *many* inventions that came out of this. There is no company in this world that had the resources to tackle this problem solely. What the government does a great job in is rallying the troops, and assembling resources to tackle a major task that would be unclimbable by the individual.   &gt; Id also like to add you are near the same age as my father who also served in the military and i thank you for your service.   Thank you. I just hope that the Navy got as much out of me, as I learned and earned from serving. It is the basis of our company." The Medicare deduction you see is a tax, not a monthly premium you are paying for your own Medicare coverage. I believe the following statement by JAGAnalyst is incorrect: In your wife's case, if you have an HSA and she has traditional health benefits with an FSA, this is not considered a problem since she can only use the FSA money for expenses incurred by members of your family on her plan. Unless your FSA funds can only be used for your spouse's expenses and not yours (very few employer FSA plan documents state this), then the IRS will assume that the FSA funds are available to all family members, thus making you ineligible to contribute to an HSA. According to the link cited above above by JAGAnalyst regarding Eligible Expenses:  You can use your account funds for numerous health care-related products and services — for yourself, your spouse, and your qualifying child or relative. You should check several things: How your business can deduct your child care expenses is beyond me. If your mother-in-law starts a business as a neighborhood babysitter, she might get some deductions for her related expenses though. In addition to the 10%/7.5% limitation mentioned in the answer by mgkrebbs (which means that very few people can take advantage of the deduction), itemized deductions reduce taxes only when the total of all the itemized deductions exceeds the standard deduction available to the taxpayer. People with mortgaged homes have a leg up on this because they can include the mortgage interest and property taxes on Schedule A whereas those who rent their living space cannot.  In other words, not having sufficient other itemized deductions can make the really ill person with medical bills large enough to exceed the 10% limitation suffer the double whammy of not getting a tax reduction for any part of the huge medical expense.