The Next Big Math Problem

Let me preface this post by saying this is the very definition of a(n extremely privileged) first world problem. Not everybody has the options I have, and I am extremely grateful to have them. But knowing I've got choices others don't have doesn't make choosing between them any easier. 


If my calculations are correct, my short-term disability (STD) insurance is going to run out relatively soon. It's a generous program, so I can hardly complain, but two-years of routine cancer treatments is just more than it was intended cover. As a result, somewhere in the next few months I will have to transition to the next phase of maintaining a life while managing cancer. 

At first blush, it's a relatively simple multiple choice question: 

You have three goals: first, to make sure you have health insurance until the moment you die; second, to make sure your life runs out before your money does; and third, to make immediate choices that will maximize your longer-term interests, rather than selling out the long-term for the short. Given these goals, when the STD runs out, do you:

1. Transition to long-term disability (LTD), assuming you can qualify?
2. Stay in the job but reduce your FTE by the percentage necessary to offset the time needed for cancer treatments (and future legs of the GCW tour)?
3. Cash in the life insurance and stop working?
4. Some combination of key features of the above?

Of course in order to evaluate each of the options, you need to know the rules. So here they are (subject to change on an annual basis, but stable for now):

1. "Annual income" for the purposes of your evaluation equals salary times FTE. Actual salary doesn't really matter for the purposes of comparing the options since, as between the options, it's just a constant.
2. "Cashing in" your life insurance requires an attestation from your doctors that you're expected to die within two years, and will pay out, one time, at a desired percentage (not to exceed 80%) of annual income (see #1). 
3. LTD, if you qualify, pays two-thirds of annual income (see #1).
4. LTD does not cover health insurance, though you can purchase that insurance through your employer for a period of thirty-six months by paying both the employer and employee contributions. You can also purchase it on the open market (see #6).
5. If you continue working, provided your don't reduce your FTE below 0.6, you continue to receive your employee health benefits.
6. Washington State provides health insurance in accordance with the provisions of the Affordable Care Act. A quick search of the Washington health care website told me there are 110 (yikes!) plans I could potentially qualify for.
7. If at any point you lose the job you lose both the life insurance and access to LTD.
8. Life expectancy at this point is a shot in the dark, though the survival rates I was given would say, statistically, a year from now is the the likeliest outcome.* 

Pencils ready? Ok, what do you do?

Talk about your math problem from hell. 


* To quote Han Solo, "Never tell me the odds..."