Category Archives: Employee Health

Another Reason Health Insurance Premiums Continue to Rise – The 2020 Health Insurer Fee/Tax

IRS Rising Costs Health Care

Rising health insurance premiums are no joking matter. Whether you are a business or individual, no one is immune to the rising costs and increasing exposures of health insurance.

Who and what’s to blame? Technology? Physician costs? Hospitals? Laboratories? Prescription costs? Consumer behavior? Fast Food? The economy? Multiple factors can be attributed to the rising premiums within the health care system, which represents 17% of the GNP. The health care industry is a large chunk of the economy, and the current political climate hasn’t made any progress in combating rising costs.

To understand what is causing this change, we must look behind the curtain.

Affordable Care Act

Since the inception of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) in 2010, also known as ObamaCare, the costs of health insurance have nearly doubled.

To help fund the creation and ongoing operation of the federal and state marketplace exchanges, the ACA requires that all insurers offering fully insured health insurance programs pay an annual Insurer Tax. Although the tax was initially $8 billion since its first year in 2014, the amount has increased each year. Now, in the upcoming 2020, IRS expecting to collect a little over $15 billion dollars cumulatively from all carriers.

When the ACA was first introduced, former President Barack Obama assured everyone that the ACA would lower costs: “If you like the plan you have, you can keep it. If you like the doctor you have, you can keep your doctor, too. The only change you’ll see are falling costs as our reforms take hold.”

However, in today’s present day, this has proven to be a misconception. In 2016, Bill Clinton summarized ACA’s impact perfectly: “So, you’ve got this crazy system where, all of a sudden, 25 million more people have health care and then the people who are out there busting it, sometimes 60 hours a week, wind up with their premiums doubled and their coverage cut in half. It’s the craziest thing in the world.”

How It Will Impact Plan Sponsors

The health insurance tax will impact all insurers offering medical, dental and vision insurance (called “covered entities”). If the IRS implements ACA’s Insurer Tax as planned, the fee is expected to add an estimated 3-4% on medical plan renewals.

No relief is in sight for counteracting these increasing premiums. Employers must rely on design strategies, contribution formulas, and other ways to bring vibrancy to their plans by consulting with their insurance brokers.

Contact CorpStrat to learn about how we can help you navigate this upcoming change in the health care industry.

Amazon Opening Their Own Healthcare Clinics – Will Your Company Be Next?

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The latest news in the health care industry comes in the form of Amazon Care, Amazon’s in-house health care service. Announced on September 24, 2019, this pilot telemedicine program is part of Amazon’s effort to cut rising health care costs and improve care for employees.

Amazon Care is a virtual health clinic created in partnership with Oasis Medical Group to service Amazon’s Seattle-based employees and their families. It will provide in-person services for employees at home or in the office as well as prescriptions for medications. An Amazon spokesperson says, “We’re currently piloting a health care benefit designed to help Amazon employees get fast access to health care without an appointment, at the convenience of their schedules, at their preferred location (home, office or virtual).”

Amazon Care 101

Covered employees will be able to access Amazon Care conveniently through a mobile app and connect with a provider within minutes. Services include Care Chat, an in-app text chatroom that connects to a nurse, and Video Care, a video call service employee can use to talk to doctors or nurses face-to-face.

If further examination is necessary, the provider can use Mobile Care, a service that sends a nurse to the employee’s location. Mobile Care can be used to collect samples, conduct lab tests or physical exams, and administer treatment. Prescriptions will also be delivered to employees within two hours or can be sent to a pharmacy for pickup.

The app will only be available on weekdays from 8 a.m. to 9 p.m., and on weekends from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. Amazon Care will not provide emergency care services.

Amazon and Health Care

Amazon Care is Amazon’s latest move within the health care industry. In 2018, the company acquired online pharmacy PillPack, and teamed up with Berkshire Hathaway and JP Morgan to create a new health care company. Earlier this year, Amazon also partnered with health care organizations interested in developing Alexa, the cloud-based voice service, to handle patient information.

With these moves and the recent Amazon Care, Amazon is quietly disrupting the health care industry. They are not only Amazon’s latest efforts to address rising health care costs, but also a path for them to secure a foothold in a growing industry. In order to compete with Amazon’s growing presence, industry giants must adapt digital technologies that enable convenience-driven access to care and combat rising health care costs. Contact CorpStrat to learn how to do this for your company.

It’s Open Enrollment Time: What’s Your Plan?

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OPEN ENROLLMENT/ Man holding small blackboard on blue sky backgr

The tightest workplace environment ever has created a demand for companies to build robust benefits packages. Employees are looking to engage, have more choices, and looking to their employers to bring vibrancy to an item that most companies have previously simply delivered as part of their employment offerings and for employees, largely seen as dormant and as an entitlement.

Some ideas to bring vibrancy to your plans include looking at the newest dental plans – engaging employees in brushing campaign to promote good dental behavior, adding pet insurance, using digital tools to communicate your offerings and deploying pre-tax plans such as cafeteria Sec 124 and HRA/HSA’s to help them pay for medical expenses on a tax-favored basis.

Rounding out your benefits packages with low-cost plans such as life insurance, vision, dental, and EAP‘s can allow small companies to look BIG, and adding a host of voluntary benefits can make even the smallest employer build a package that rivals the largest.

Did you know? About 75% of companies in California go through their open enrollment in the 4th Quarter. That creates a bottleneck at the carrier for processing employee changes, receiving new ID cards, and billing issues. Not to mention if you decide to make a carrier change, then the underwriting and approval processes are delayed, and normal turnaround times are doubled.

That means it’s time to get an early jump on the market and work closely with your broker to determine the best plan and design for your company’s benefit plans.

Contact the experts at CorpStrat for a consultation and let us bring you into our 21^st Century HR Platform.

The Benefits of Employee Benefits

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Your people are the backbone of your organization’s ability to grow and drive revenue. So how important are quality employee benefits to achieving your company’s goals and objectives? They are extremely crucial.

Employees value a well-rounded selection of benefits, and health insurance, a 401(k) plan, life insurance and dental coverage are a few of the plans that you can consider offering.

The Benefits

Benefits packages offer value to your employees and help you boost productivity and retention in a cost-effective manner. Here are a few of the advantages of offering employee benefits as part of your compensation package.

Talent Attraction and Retention

Employees highly value a good benefits package. Developing a strategic benefits package that targets specific types of employees can help attract the right job candidates to keep your organization running at peak efficiency.

Once you have these top-performing employees at your company, providing a tailored employee benefits package will serve as a barrier to them leaving—a great benefits package can be a huge advantage when looking at retention strategies because it holds more than just monetary value for the employee. A bigger salary at another company likely won’t be as strong a pull for an employee tempted to leave if the other company’s benefits package isn’t as attractive as yours.

Healthy, Productive Employees

When your benefits package includes a combination of health insurance and dental and vision coverage, you will have employees who are able to take a proactive role in managing their health. They will have easy, affordable access to health care, reducing absenteeism due to illness.

When they are on the job, healthy employees are more productive than sick ones. It’s beneficial for your company’s productivity and your employees when they have access to medical coverage and time off when they are sick.

Satisfaction

A good benefits package leads to satisfied employees with higher morale. Employees who find value in their benefits are typically more willing to commit to their company because it helps make them feel valued—which leads to increased productivity and decreased absenteeism.

Efficient Use of Resources

Offering valuable benefits can help lower top employees’ expectations for salary. Many employees are willing to accept good benefits in lieu of a slightly higher salary.

This is an advantage to your budget because the value you present to employees with benefits, especially health insurance plans, can be monetarily equal to a raise in salary for them, while costing you less due to group rates and lower payroll taxes. Employers can avoid the hidden cost of paying extra payroll taxes on higher salary by instead offering benefits to provide similar value to employees.

Thinking Long-term

Even if you think you can save a little money in the short term by skimping on employee benefits, you will eventually face the consequences through a lowered ability to attract high-achieving employees, increased difficulty retaining your top performers, and lowered morale and productivity.

Offering a quality array of employee benefits will pay off through a stronger, more productive workforce with employees committed to your company.

Get Ready for Year End Open Enrollment Season

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Young employee listening to his manager explain open enrollment options

This is the time of the year where companies of all sizes struggle to get quality employee engagement during Open Enrollment period.

Even with technology offering automated benefits management tools, the challenges still persist when it comes to making it easier for employees to sign up for the benefits that are the best for them and/or their families.

To challenge this disconnect, employers and their Human Resources administrators can follow these tips in creating more employee engagement for Open Enrollment season.

Keep the initial communications on Open Enrollment simple

The very first message regarding Open Enrollment should be short and simple. This is not the time to throw everything at them all at once with boatloads of information on the varying offerings Open Enrollment provides.

Provide them with a clear message of the importance of the upcoming Open Enrollment process, varying deadlines, contact information and any upcoming meetings you have planned.

Keep the language simple and clear on the documentation of your benefits packages.

When describing what each plan is and what is covered, make sure to use bullet points in highlighting key details and while comparing and contrasting the available offerings.

Use your means of communication methods

Be mindful of your employee’s different thoughts, feelings, problems and more regarding their offerings. Communicate the differences to them and work with them to recognize and use their preferred means of communication.

While some people prefer their communication method delivered via email, you may have others who need a hard copy brochure to get your message across. They even might need something tangible they can hold in their hands like a poster or flier to bring home to their families to discuss.

Whichever way your employees prefer to receive their Open Enrollment information, make sure to change up the look-and-feel. Try to keep it fresh and engaging with design and layout changes, even as the information stays pretty much the same throughout.

Create engaging messages around the individual and/or their families

Organizations who are successful with higher employee engagement rates during Open Enrollment do a great job of cutting out the noise by highlighting what’s the most important information for an individual and/or their families in the offerings they are choosing from.

For example, employers may dive deep into what the actual costs are for employees on high deductible health plans, or, they might highlight a new voluntary benefit—added to their offering package. Addressing key components that make the benefits so attractive to add with their traditional healthcare selections.

Promoting voluntary benefits to create employee engagement

In 2016, the cost of care hit over $10,000 per person. With more-and-more employers turning to High-Deductible Healthcare plans to help offset the rising costs of healthcare and to keep premiums lower, we are seeing more people struggle to find the coverage they need as a result.

Voluntary Benefits are extremely important for employers to offer because it gives their employees the power to prepare for the worst when it comes to their healthcare. Today, a traditional healthcare plan might not be enough to support a person or their family financially in the event they get really sick.

Above all, it’s important to stay organized, keep a tight schedule and when in doubt, remember the challenge is to communicate 10x better and more frequently to get your message past all the noise.