Plan Picker
Five plans, one household. The right choice depends less on the paycheck deduction than on your doctors and your prescriptions. This page walks through how to pick, then runs the comparison with your own numbers — entirely in your browser.
Uses the October 26, 2026 TENTATIVE AGREEMENT deductions — RATIFIED NOVEMBER 10, 2026
Privacy: the picker runs entirely in your browser. Nothing you enter on this page is sent or stored anywhere — there is no account, no form submission, and no tracking.
A note if your household is facing something serious. These estimates are built for ordinary planning — regular medications, office visits, a normal year. If you or a family member is dealing with a serious or life-altering condition — cancer, a transplant, major surgery, a premature baby, ongoing hospital-level care — do not choose on these numbers alone. In a year like that, the worst-case ceiling, the network, and the coverage details matter far more than the expected cost, and every plan handles those situations differently. Before you enroll, call County Employee Benefits at (559) 600-1810 and walk through your situation with them.
How to pick the best plan
Four checks, in order. The first two eliminate plans; the last two price the survivors.
- Network first. A cheap plan that drops your doctors isn't cheap. The two Kaiser plans pay nothing out of network except emergencies — if your care sits at Stanford Children's, Valley Children's, or with community doctors, a Kaiser plan means changing doctors or paying in full yourself. The Anthem EPO plans (Cypress and Maple) pay in-network only. The Anthem HDPPO is the only plan on the menu with out-of-network benefits.
- Medications change the math. One specialty prescription can cost more in a year than the difference between any two premiums on the menu. List your household's medications before you look at a single premium — the next section shows why.
- Compare two numbers, not one. The paycheck deduction is only the first cost. Compare each plan's expected year (premium + prescriptions + the deductible and copays your family will actually hit) and its worst-case ceiling (premium + the plan's out-of-pocket maximums). At the Family tier, Cypress's premium alone — $7,583 a year — is more than the HDPPO's entire worst-case year of $6,000.
- If you elect a high-deductible plan, fund the HSA. The deductible is the plan's real price: $3,500 individual / $6,000 family. Spread across 26 paychecks, pre-funding it in a Health Savings Account takes $134.62 per check (individual) or $230.77 per check (family) — pre-tax, and whatever you don't spend rolls over and stays yours. The County contributes $0 to the HSA, so the funding is yours to set up.
Sources: County of Fresno 2027 Benefit Guide (Active Employees) — plan descriptions and comparison charts; rate sheet presented at the October 26, 2026 bargaining session (tentative agreement, ratified by the members November 10, 2026).
Medications change the math
Prescriptions are where the five plans stop looking alike.
On a copay plan (Cypress, Maple, Kaiser HMO), prescriptions start on day one at set copays — $10–$20 for a generic, $20–$40 for a preferred brand — and a specialty (Tier 4) drug is $150 per fill on all three plans. That $150 is charged every fill, all year: a monthly specialty drug is $1,800 a year in copays, on top of the premium, before a single doctor visit. The one brake is each plan's separate pharmacy out-of-pocket maximum — once your prescription copays reach it ($2,000 family on Cypress, $4,000 family on Maple, $2,700 family on Kaiser HMO), prescription copays stop for the year.
On a high-deductible plan (Anthem HDPPO, Kaiser HDHP), there are no prescription copays. You pay the plan's negotiated price, and it counts toward the deductible. Negotiated prices for specialty drugs are high — thousands of dollars a fill — so the same specialty drug that costs $150 a fill on a copay plan can finish a $6,000 family deductible in the first month or two. From that point the out-of-pocket maximum is met, and prescriptions — and all other covered care — are $0 for the rest of the year. Specialty medications are the one household expense that can turn a high-deductible plan from the riskiest-looking option into the cheapest year on the menu.
Daily generics are cheap everywhere — $10 a fill on Cypress and Kaiser, $20 on Maple — so a list of generics alone rarely decides between plans. It's the specialty line, and whether a pharmacy cap catches it, that moves the answer. That's why the picker below asks about your medications drug by drug instead of asking how much you "usually spend at the pharmacy."
Sources: County of Fresno 2027 Benefit Guide (Active Employees), prescription tiers in the Anthem and Kaiser comparison charts; Anthem "Your summary of benefits" for Custom EPO 500 and Custom EPO 1000 and the Kaiser plan summaries, for the pharmacy out-of-pocket maximums.
The Plan Picker
Enter your coverage tier, the care you can't move, and your household's medications. The math runs entirely in your browser — nothing you type here is sent or stored anywhere.
Why these numbers may not match what you've seen: this picker uses the County contributions from the October 26 tentative agreement — the rates members ratified on November 10, 2026. The County's enrollment sheet and MyWorkplace still show the 2026 County contribution — a smaller amount — so the same plan can show a higher price there. Example: Maple, Employee + Child(ren), is $93.00 more per check on the County's sheet for exactly that reason. Ratification is final — members approved the agreement on November 10, 2026 — and the County's systems will update to the new contributions; until they do, the old 2026 contribution is what the County's sheet shows.
The print button opens your browser's print dialog with a clean worksheet (choose "Save as PDF" there to keep a PDF). The .docx is a real Word document, generated in your browser from the same numbers — nothing is uploaded anywhere.