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The way we play the game of health insurance has changed over the years. Currently, many employers, small and large, are grossly overpaying for their benefits program for the workplace. Human Resources has become so complicated and, straight up crazy, that it is hard for anyone to keep up with it. Especially old school insurance brokers and employers.
Just like many other industries, including sports, the game has to change in order to compete. If you do not change your game, you will be marked for extinction. There are employers with costs rising so high they are forced to shut their doors for good. Sound familiar?
Employees are left without a job because they are left in the dark on the discussions going on in the boardroom with the executives of the company. Is it that the employer refusing new ideas? Or is it because the insurance broker did not change with the times?
Perhaps a little bit of both!
Employers have a chance to make a difference, not only for the company but their employees. What if you were able to save tens of thousands, or hundreds of thousands of dollars and have single digit increases each year? It is possible.
Alternatively, maybe just controlling the cost by slowing the rate of increases down could help save the company? What if you can do that without taking away the provider network or increasing the deductible to shave a few dollars off the premium? It is possible.
The first thing is you have to be open-minded to new ways. If you are only there to hear out the ideas, but not try any of the new concepts, then you are wasting everyone's time. Some of the insurance advisors are charging for that meeting alone to give that valuable information the employers can save a lot of money.
If you are hesitant, the next thing you should do is implement small steps towards the cost savings goal. If it’s too much to go with a provider network that has no restrictions, then go smaller by offering the employees a cost savings route by going to a Direct Primary Care facility before going to a regular doctor at no cost to them. Maybe even negotiated rates at outpatient surgical facilities away from the hospital with more than qualified doctors.
Employers can move the risk pools away from the traditional full insured employer-sponsored plans. By doing this, you can get access to claim data that you do not get with a traditional fully insured group. This new way of buying health insurance will give information on where the claims are heading for your group and combat it with programs as simple as employee education. The cost could be next to nothing, but it could end up saving you thousands a year on premium increases.
There is much work to be done on your employee benefits program. The sooner you start, the sooner the savings begin. Quit throwing out thousands, if not tens of thousands of dollars a year in wasted dollars that can be invested in more productive and profitable things.