How Can I Cancel or Enroll Into My Company Insurance Benefits Life Event

At least every day I am faced with the question " How can I enroll into my benefits?" or "How do I cancel my benefits?" employees asking this question are not new hires. The people that want to make changes to their benefits are people that either enroll into benefits and not realizing how much their take home pay will be or they really need the benefits because some type of catastrophe happened. Both scenarios have the same answer, "did you experience a qualified life event?" According to section 125, an employee has to experience a qualified life event in order to make changes to their benefits ( i.e. enroll, cancel, or add dependents). You can not make changes to your benefits at anytime because the benefits you are provided through your employer are pre-taxed. 

Examples of Qualified Life Events:

• Birth
• Gain/Loss of other group coverage (example: covered under you spouse's employer)
• Loss of Medicaid insurance
• Divorce/Marriage

If an employee experiences a qualified life event next they must report it with their employer within a certain amount of time (30 or 31 days), depending on the employer they may handle life events or it may be handled through a third party administrator (TPA). If the employee has reported their life event outside of their employers time frame they would have to wait until open enrollment to make any changes.
When Can I Make Changes To My Benefits? Open enrollment or also known as annual enrollment, eahc depending on the employer plan years maybe different but employee have the opportunity every year to enroll or make changes to their benefits. During open enrollment time employers may alter the benefits such as change carriers, change benefit information, and also discontinue a benefit.
Unfortunately, some people wait months to report a life event or think they can enroll into benefits at anytime and because they can't afford benefits during their new hire enrollment they think once their financial situation changes they will enroll, or on the flip side they experience  a medical emergency and do not have any insurance at all and faced with a financial crisis that they can not pay their medical bills.
My advice make your decisions wisely during your new hire enrollment and also your annual enrollment time.