Equalizing Insurance Costs for Postdoctoral Fellows

In accordance with the Vice President for Research’s Statement on Salary and Benefits, the VPR asks DLCI administrators to work with faculty hosts of postdoctoral fellows to offset SHIP insurance costs so that a postdoctoral fellow’s out-of-pocket expense for premiums does not exceed that of a postdoctoral associate.

There are two options for faculty hosts to offset insurance costs for fellows:

  • Pay insurance premium directly to MIT Health
    • Must use discretionary or general funds
    • Doesn’t affect fellow’s income/tax liability
  • Provide fellow with a supplemental, concurrent postdoctoral associate appointment
    • Fellowship must not prohibit additional compensation
    • Can be charged to sponsored funds (grant or contract)
      • Note: federal fellowships cannot be supplemented with funding from other federal awards
      • Salary charged to the sponsored award is also subject to employee benefits rate, vacation accrual rate, and indirect cost rates (no exceptions).
    • May increase fellow’s tax liability

Examples

Using the insurance premium option, a payment of $2000 with a 10% fund transaction fee ($200) has total costs of $2,200.
Using the concurrent postdoctoral associate appointment option, a salary of $2000 with a 27.2% employee benefits rate ($544), a 9.9% vacation accrual rate ($198) and a 62% facilities and administration rate charged on salary, benefits, and vacation accrual ($1700) has total costs of $4,442.