How to check your unused GreenShield benefits

GreenShield shows what you have spent, not what you have left

This one is specific to GreenShield and it is the reason people give up.

Your coverage does not arrive as a balance. GreenShield shows the amount you have already claimed against a service, and your limit is written beside it as a sentence rather than a number, along the lines of a maximum over a twelve month period beginning in a named month. Working out what is actually left means reading that sentence and doing the subtraction yourself, for every service, one at a time.

Why nobody can tell you what you have

Your maximums, your categories and your dates all come from your employer’s contract with GreenShield. GreenShield administers the plan. Your employer chose its shape.

Plan years matter more here than most people expect. Nothing says a benefit year has to end on December 31, and a GreenShield plan year can begin in any month. The date your coverage goes back to zero is the one your employer picked.

Not everything is counted the same way

• Massage, physiotherapy, chiropractic, acupuncture and naturopathy may have a maximum for the year, a cap on how much is covered per appointment, or both. A treatment costing more than the per visit cap leaves you paying the difference even with plenty of annual maximum left.
• Some limits are counted in visits, not dollars. A set number of appointments a year rather than an amount.
• Some services need a prescription first, from a physician or nurse practitioner, before anything is covered. Massage may be among them.
• Psychologists, psychotherapists and counsellors often share a single maximum between them rather than each having their own.
• Glasses, contact lenses and eye exams usually run on a rolling window counted from the last time you used them.
• A health spending account is the one to watch. A flat pot for almost anything the rest of the plan does not cover, and genuinely use it or lose it at the end of the benefit year.

All of those are on your own plan. Read them rather than assuming.

What Benloop does

Benloop links with your GreenShield 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, without working through them one at a time. 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.