The way we play the health insurance game has changed over the years. Today, many employers, small and large, are overpaying for their workplace benefits program. HR has gotten so complicated and downright crazy that it’s hard for anyone to keep up. Especially the old school insurance brokers and employers.
Like many other industries, including sports, the game has to change in order to compete. If you don’t change your game, you will be marked for extinction. There are employers with costs rising so high that they are forced to close their doors forever. Sounds familiar?
Employees are out of a job because they are unaware of the discussions taking place in the boardroom with company executives. Is it that the entrepreneur refuses new ideas? Or is it because the insurance broker hasn’t changed with the times?
Maybe a little of both!
Employers have the opportunity to make a difference, not only for the company but also for their employees. What if you could save tens of thousands or millions of thousands of dollars and have single-digit raises every year? It’s possible.
Alternatively, perhaps just controlling cost by lowering the rate of increase could help save the company? What if you can do that without eliminating the provider network or raising your deductible to save a few dollars on your premium? It’s possible.
The first thing is to have an open mind to new forms. If you’re just there to listen to ideas, but don’t try any of the new concepts, then you’re wasting everyone’s time. Some of the insurance advisors are charging just for that meeting to provide that valuable information that can save employers a lot of money.
If you are in doubt, the next thing to do is take small steps toward your cost savings goal. If it’s too much to go with a provider network that has no restrictions, then make it smaller and offer employees a cost saving route by going to a direct primary care facility before going to a regular doctor at no cost to them. Perhaps you even negotiated rates at out-of-hospital ambulatory surgical facilities with more-than-qualified doctors.
Employers can move risk groups away from traditional employer-sponsored plans with full coverage. By doing this, you can gain access to claims data that you don’t get with a traditional fully insured group. This new way to shop for health insurance will give you insight into where claims are headed for your group and combat it with programs as simple as employee education. The cost may be next to nothing, but it could end up saving you thousands of dollars a year in premium increases.
There is a lot of work to be done on your employee benefits program. The sooner you start, the sooner the savings begin. Stop throwing away thousands, if not tens of thousands of dollars a year in wasted dollars that can be invested in more productive and profitable things.