How To Provide Competitive Employee Benefits

Providing health insurance and benefits is often a company’s second-highest expense after payroll.

If your current broker’s only strategy for lowering that expense is to shuffle your company around to different carriers, then it's time to find someone who can help you create a true cost-containment strategy.

How to LOWER your Premiums

Insurance carriers cannot mark up premiums by more than 15-20% of the cost of claims. The Affordable Care Act requires that 80-85% of all premium dollars go towards paying healthcare claims.

CFOs and business executives should consider their healthcare costs as a business operation, and be involved in controlling the costs. The lesson is this: if you can reduce claims, you can reduce your premiums.

Giving your employees the tools, resources, and education to lower claims is not for the faint of heart. Partnering with a broker who is adept at monitoring and analyzing these expenses is imperative.

Here is the ultimate litmus test: If your healthcare costs have increased over the past 5 years, you probably need to look at a new broker. If that is you, send me a DM - I would love to talk with you.

While the base cost of healthcare hasn’t changed much over the last few years, health insurance premiums have continued to skyrocket. There are many solutions that we can help your company implement to avoid those double-digit renewal rates.

A few resources that your broker SHOULD be helping you with are:

1 - Fair Market Pricing Resources

It is a well-known fact that the price for the same procedure or test can vary widely. For example, a recent study showed that an MRI can cost anywhere between $134 to $4,065 for the same test at the same location.

By giving your employees tools to shop for both quality and cost, you can dramatically increase their satisfaction with their plan and decrease the amount paid out in claims (and thus lower your premiums).

For example:

Our partners will give your employees access to a Dedicated Care Coordinator to support your employees in making educated healthcare decisions.

Let's say, you have an employee that needs to have a gallbladder taken out. Gallbladder surgery can range from $5,000 - $45,000. The price is primarily determined by WHERE the procedure happens and not the QUALITY of the procedure.

Our tools will help your employees find all of the providers within a driveable distance that can perform that surgery. Within that radius, let’s say there are 38 doctors capable of performing that surgery.

Only 19 of those doctors meet the criteria of having done enough of those surgeries in the last year to be considered proficient at it.

Out of those 19, only 8 of them have superior ratings from the medical community.

Out of those 8, only 5 of them will charge a fair price closer to the 5k range.

Your employees will be steered towards those 5 doctors, so they can get the BEST care for a FAIR price.

2 - Leading Edge Drug Pricing

A large number of claim dollars will go to prescription costs. This is often a huge concern for your employees as well.

We provide technology-driven solutions including daily monitoring of the lowest accepted pricing for generic, brand, and specialty drugs across 67,000 nationwide pharmacies. This allows your employees to access the absolute lowest price for prescriptions.

The Care Coordinator can also help your employees take advantage of manufacturer coupons to save your employee and your company on the out-of-pocket costs for specialty drugs.

This technology and support can help you save 20-50% on your total Rx cost.

Your Employees Deserve Better

I believe that every employee deserves access to quality healthcare, which is why we work with employers who want more control and transparency over their healthcare costs.

If you're ready to take control of your healthcare costs and improve your employees' healthcare experience, send me a message!

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Sources:

MRI Price Discrepancy Study: https://pubs.rsna.org/doi/10.1148/radiol.2021211948