Do your health benefits expire at the end of the year?

December 31 is common, not universal

Plenty of workplace plans do run on the calendar year and reset on January 1. Plenty do not. A benefit year can begin in any month, because it follows your employer’s contract with the insurer rather than the calendar.

So the useful question is not whether benefits expire in December. It is what date your plan uses, which is on your own coverage page and nowhere else.

What actually disappears, and what does not

• Massage, physiotherapy, chiropractic, acupuncture and naturopathy usually run on the benefit year. Whatever is left at the end of it is gone.
• Psychologists, psychotherapists and counsellors usually have their own maximum on the same yearly cycle, separate from the services above. Having used none of one does not mean you have none of the other.
• Glasses, contact lenses and eye exams usually do not expire in December at all. Vision tends to run on a cycle counted from the last time you used it, commonly 48 months. Nothing is lost at year end. The question is what date you next become eligible, and rushing to use it in December can mean using it earlier in the cycle than you needed to.
• A health spending account is the one to watch. It is a flat pot you can put towards almost anything the rest of the plan does not cover, and it usually forfeits at the end of the benefit year.

Some plans carry a health spending account forward for one year and some do not. That one is worth checking specifically, because the answer decides whether you have a deadline at all.

What to do about it

Find your reset date first, before you book anything. Everything else follows from it, and it takes one look at your coverage page.

Then check what is left rather than guessing. A plan is usually split across more separate limits than people expect, and each one has to be looked up on its own, so the total is easy to get wrong from memory.

If something is expiring and you have no appointment, book the appointment before the date rather than the treatment you had in mind. A booked visit inside the plan year counts. A good intention does not.

What Benloop does

Benloop links with your insurer’s account on your behalf and puts all of it on one screen: every service you are covered for, what is left in each, and the date it either resets or comes available again. Your whole family in one place. Benloop reminds you before those dates arrive, while there is still time to book.

If you do not have somewhere to go, the Benefits Concierge will find you one. Tell it what you are looking for, where you are, and anything else that matters to you, and it sends back a shortlist of clinics with a link to book.