Health insurance

When coverage starts

Your medical, dental, and vision coverage is effective the first of the month following your start date. If you start on March 3rd, you're covered March 1st of the following month; if you start on March 1st itself, you're covered that same day. There's no separate 90-day wait — the plans just aren't active on day one unless your start date happens to land on the first.

You have 30 days from your start date to make your elections in Gusto. If you don't act in that window, you'll be enrolled in the default plan described below, so it's worth doing on purpose rather than by default.

Your plan choices

We offer two medical plans through Cigna:

• Daisy PPO — higher paycheck deduction, lower deductible, larger network, no referrals needed to see a specialist. A good fit if you see doctors often or want predictable costs.
• Daisy HDHP — lower paycheck deduction, higher deductible, and it's paired with a Health Savings Account (see below). A good fit if you're healthy, want to save pretax, or already have an HSA balance from a previous job.

Dental and vision are separate elections, also through Cigna, and you can take either, both, or neither regardless of which medical plan you pick. The company pays 80% of the premium for employee-only coverage and 50% of the premium for any dependents you add; the rest comes out of your paycheck pretax.

HSA vs FSA

If you're on the HDHP, you're eligible for a Health Savings Account (HSA). The account is yours — it moves with you if you leave, it never expires, and Daisy seeds it: $500/year for employee-only coverage, $1,000/year for family coverage, deposited in equal installments each pay period. You can also contribute your own money pretax through payroll, up to the current IRS annual limit — check the limit for the current year on the IRS website or in your Guideline/Gusto dashboard, since it's adjusted annually and isn't something we're going to get right by printing a number here.

If you're on the PPO, you're not eligible for an HSA, but you can enroll in a Flexible Spending Account (FSA) instead. An FSA is also pretax, but unlike an HSA it's "use it or lose it" — check the current-year contribution limit and plan-carryover rules in Gusto before you set your election, since FSA balances don't automatically roll over the way HSA balances do.

Open enrollment and mid-year changes

Open enrollment runs the first two weeks of November each year, with changes effective January 1. Outside that window, elections are locked — with one exception.

A qualifying life event (marriage, divorce, birth or adoption of a child, loss of other coverage, or a few similar situations) opens a 30-day window to change your elections outside open enrollment. Tell People Ops as soon as the event happens; the window is short and doesn't extend for paperwork delays.

If you leave: COBRA

If your employment ends, you can continue your Cigna coverage under COBRA for up to 18 months, at your own cost — COBRA lets you keep the same plan, but without the company's share of the premium, so it's meaningfully more expensive than what came out of your paycheck while you were here. You'll get COBRA election paperwork by mail after your last day; it isn't automatic, and there's a deadline to elect it.

Questions

For anything plan-specific — claims, in-network providers, prior authorizations — Cigna's member services line is faster than People Ops. For enrollment mechanics, elections, or a qualifying life event, ask People Ops or see "New hire paperwork" for how your first elections tie into everything else you sign in week one.