Health insurance premium changes with new baby

Hi everyone,

Hoping to get some outside perspective as my wife and I are thinking through and planning out starting a family with our first child. My wife and I are both teachers and we work in the same school district. We have separate health insurance plans, as Employee Only is only $52 a month.

In talking to HR as we plan for possibly having a baby, we got the doc for how the premiums will change if we add a child onto our insurance. As I said, Employee only is $52/month. Employee + Spouse/Child is $556/month. Family is $967/month. If we have a child, we would keep one of us as Employee Only and one as Employee + Child. 18.5% of our take home pay would go towards health insurance for the 3 of us.

Here is our coverage:

Deductible – $700

OOP Max – $1400

Coinsurance – 90%

For both my wife and I, these are the only career jobs we have had (8 years in), so we don't really have much frame of reference to the quality of our coverage. Initally I thought the $500 jump in monthly premium for adding a child was a pretty big jump, I can understand it if the coverage is good. Unfortuantely we don't have the benefit of comparing which parent to add the child on, as we work in the same school district.

Any outside input on how reasonable that change is? Going through lots of new learning as we potentially plan ahead for starting a family, so thank you in advance!