Your insurance through your employer is your primary insurance, and your spouse's primary insurance is through his/her employer. If both husband and wife are insured on both insurance policies, then you have primary and secondary coverage. But you will still have to pay any deductibles and co-pays before either policy will pay. The deductible is the amount you first have to pay (usually at the first of the year) before the insurance will pay anything. The co-pay is your percentage of what the insurance doesn't pay, which for many health insurance companies is 80% for them and 20% for you. There is sometimes a co-insurance that you have to pay also. Ex: Insurance companies have a set amount that they pay for any office visit, procedure, etc. If the bill is over what the insurance pays, then you are responsible for the balance.
If both you and your spouse have full medical coverage then the insurance compnay will revert back to your and your spouse's date of birth. Whoever's birthdate is first in a calendar year, then that is the primary insurance. For example, if your birthday is November 1, but your spouse's birthday is February 12, then your spouses insurance is primary for both of you.
If you have insurance through your employer, and you are the policy holder,(the insurance is in your name) this insurance will be primary for you, and your spouses insurance policy will be secondary. The insurance policy thru your spouse's employer, (your spouse is the policy holder, or the insurance is in their name), this would be primary for your spouse, and your policy would be their secondary. Here's the phamplet from Medicare http://www.medicare.gov/Publications/Pubs/pdf/02179.pdf
yes they can
Not in the United States or Canada, unless the employer also refuses insurance coverage to opposite-sex spouses.
if convicted of dwi insurer can deny coverge for named insured and spouses cars if no lienholder.
yes If you drop your insurance, your spouse's insurance would not be primary. It would be the only insurance you'd have. "Primary" only comes into play if you are covered by more than one policy. You should check carefully before dropping your own insurance. First of all, be sure your spouse can get family coverage through his employer. My employer only offers individual coverage because family coverage is so expensive. Second, if you both have family coverage, keep the policy with the best benefit-to-cost ratio. If your spouse's policy is cheap but has a high deductible, and yours is more expensive but has only fairly small co-pays, you may have reason to chose one over the other. Or, keep the insurance of the spouse whose job is most likely to still exist several years into the future. If I dropped my insurance I would ask my employer to increase my salary since benefits are part of your compensation, and dropping your insurance saves your employer a great deal of money.
The employer does not have to pay for the spouse's coverage. It can be offered to the employee and the cost taken from his/her paycheck to cover the spouse. There is no legal requirement for the employer to offer coverage for spouses -- even at the employee's expense. However, it would be very unusual for a plan to cover only employees and not have coverage available for spouses and children.
Assuming the employer offers coverage to spouses, then the employer would not have the right to turn a spouse away. The spouse's loss of coverage is a "qualifying event" and the employer's insurer would allow the spouse to join.
They can choose not to provide coverage for a spouse. US law states employers have to provide insurance for employee's children under the age of 26, but does not say anything about spouses, so they can choose to stop covering employee's spouses.
You will have a choice between your employer's plan and your spouse's plan. Your employer may ask you for proof that you are covered by your spouse's plan. Your employer's plan will want this, in order to ensure that people are not dropping out for other reasons (such as they can't afford to join).
Both of you policies will spell out this in the "Co-ordination of Benefits" clause. Most likely the oldest plan will be primary but some go by the birthday of the person insured under the policy. If the retirement benefit coverage is from your spouses policy and the current employer is in your name the birthday may come into effect. Check the COB clause and you will probably find out. If not call the companies.
If you mean can they buy insurance jointly or insure each other, then the answer is "yes" in states where same-sex marriage is legal. If you mean to ask if an employer will give health, dental, optical insurance benefits to the same-sex spouse, then the answer is this: In states where same-sex marriage is legal, if an employer gives any benefit to the spouses of its workers, then it cannot legally deny that benefit to the spouse of one of its workers merely because his marriage is a same-sex marriage. So the answer is yes. If they extend insurance coverage to spouses, then they must do so to ALL spouses.