MPI Health Plan Premiums starting Jan. 2013

MPI Participants will soon be receiving notification by mail of the impending Premium charges that will be due January 1st of 2013. A meeting of Business Agents held at the IATSE's West Coast office yesterday focused on the introduction of the Health Plan premiums in fine detail.

For your reference and records, here is a copy of the presentation that was given. Please download it and save it for your review.

Premiums will be charged for any MPI participants who are interested in adding eligible dependents to their MPI Health Plan participation. These charges will be assessed monthly and charged quarterly. The charges are broken down in the chart below:

Premium notification invoices will be sent to participants approximately 30 days prior to the start of the next eligibility period (the Due Date). Those invoices will list the amount of hours worked in the last eligibility period, the hours listed in the participants Bank of Hours and which dependents were covered in the last eligibility period. Finally, there is a section to choose which dependents will continue to be covered by the MPI Health Plan in the next period which means dependents can be dropped or added as needed.

Here is an example of the MPI Premium Invoice.

The premium payment will be due on the first day of the following Eligibility Period. Participants will have an initial 15 day grace period to make their premium payments before the dependents are dropped from the plan. Dependents whose MPI coverage ended due to non-payment can not be re-enrolled until the beginning of the following Eligibility Period. There are a few exceptions to this rule.

During the first months of 2013, there will be some proration of the premium costs based on participants whose coverage overlaps the beginning of the premiums to the plan. For example, a participant whose eligibility period runs from September 1, 2012 to February 28, 2013 will be charged two months of premiums on January 1, 2013.

Married or Same-Sex Domestic Partner participants who currently enjoy dual coverage will each have to pay the applicable premium in order to continue to receive dual coverage for themselves and eligible dependent children. If only one participant pays the applicable premium charges, the other participant will have dual coverage and the paying participant and children will have "primary" coverage only.

For further explanation, please review this copy of the letter that will be sent to participants today. Feel free to call the Guild or email Steve Kaplan with any specific questions regarding you may have regarding these charges.