Category Archives: featured

5 Hidden Attributes in Health Insurance Plans

Many people don’t even think about their health insurance plan until they get sick. The fact is, it also means many people aren’t getting the most out of their plans because they don’t know how to unlock hidden benefits. We firmly believe that a good health insurance plan can do something powerful for everybody. Even if you’re not sick or injured, a good plan can put you on a path to optimal health with the right type of support along the way.

Today we’re sharing some of the most popular hidden attributes in health insurance plans.

1. Alternative Medicine

That lingering back pain might be a thing of the past. Most insurance plans provide some benefits that cover chiropractic care, massage therapy, and acupuncture treatment as a means of alleviating pain or assisting with an injury or illness.

2. Weight Loss & Smoking Cessation

Many insurance companies have moved the needle on preventative care and are incentivizing people to lose weight and get healthy. They have outreach programs that support those struggling to quit smoking and lose weight. Some even subsidize health club memberships.

3. Mental Health

As part of the Mental Health Parity Act of 2010 in the ACA, all insurance companies are required to provide equal benefits for mental health. Let’s face it, in these crazy and uncertain times, we can all use a little mental therapy. If you look closely, there are benefits available to you designed to help you cope and deal with life’s challenges. These benefits include access to psychologists, psychiatrists, and both in and out patient care.

4. Telemedicine

Stay healthy and alleviate concerns, all from the comfort of you own home. The pandemic accelerated virtual healthcare visits and most insurance companies have moved towards allowing people to have consultations and doctor’s visits virtually. Many people have this benefit without realizing it, be sure to login to your benefits platform to take advantage of not needing to go to the doctor’s office.

5. Disease Management

People that are diabetic and asthmatic can benefit from full-fledged programs that include blood sugar monitoring and consultations. These diseases may require round the clock support so having resources to aid in disease management is key. Don’t be afraid to ask your plan if they sponsor blood sugar management tools.

–

Insurance companies are adapting to become much more consumer-centric. Reach out and find out what’s available. You’ll be surprised how many opportunities there are.

If you have any question, reach out to us at marketing@corpstrat.com or 818.377.7260

Are You Worried about the Quality of Your Benefits Offerings Post-COVID?

Leave a reply

During the pandemic shutdown, many employers had to get creative with how they delivered benefits. For the first time ever companies had fully remote teams, made work/life balance top priority, and ensured ample tele-health and mental health resources were available to their teams. As we return to the office, employees are now expecting these benefits and perks and feel more empowered than ever to ask for them. This creates a tricky situation for small business owners who might be working with tighter budgets. Employers are juggling budgets with making sure they’re keeping their talent happy in a post-pandemic world.

Small Business Owners Are Finding It Hard to Expand Benefits Post-COVID.

For companies with 500 employees or more, expanding benefits is a no-brainer. Many plan to increase their offerings in the next 12 months. However, for small business owners with fewer than 500 workers, affordability can be a barrier. The pandemic has changed the kinds of benefits and support employees are expecting. Many employees now want benefits like expanded retirement savings, pet insurance, access to fitness and mental health professionals, and more.

When It Comes to Benefits, You Don’t Have to Be on Your Own.

Many smaller companies don’t have an HR team to help them understand how to deliver benefits without breaking the bank. They want to offer their employees the world but don’t know how to create a benefits package that makes fiscal sense. In order to empower small businesses with the resources to evolve their benefits options, it will require better communication from both small business owners and their providers to decide on the products and services employees want and how to deliver them.

That’s where we come in. In order to fix the problem and empower your small business with the resources to evolve your benefits options along with your workforce, you need someone to guide you through the process. We can help you combine creative and main stay benefits that will attract and retain talent.

–

Don’t wait until it’s too late, call us today to get your benefits set up for 2022. Call us at (818) 377-7260 or email us at marketing@corpstrat.com.

“Can I Deduct Medical Expenses Not Covered by My Insurance Plan?” – Answer Inside

Leave a reply

What if we told you there was a way you can deduct all of the medical expenses that are not covered by your insurance plan. Doesn’t that sound interesting?

We’re talking about things like deductibles, co-insurance, doctor visits, doctor’s who don’t take insurance, eyeglasses, therapy, etc. Basically, all the things that you shake your head at and wonder, “why am I paying thousands of dollars for every year, after tax dollars?”

We’re here to tell you that there is a way to make all of these expenses deductible through a Discriminatory Medical Reimbursement Plan. This plan is available to:

Subchapter S Members
Sole Proprieters
Members of an LLC
Officers of an S Corporation.

If this pertains to you, please give us a call now and we can help make sure you’re maximizing deductibility. Your CPA may tell you that it’s not possible, but let us check to see what we can do.

At CorpStrat, our primary focus is helping business owners utilize all available strategies to overcome the complexities in benefit planning, reverse discrimination of benefits, and maximize deductibility. If you want to learn more about medical reimbursement strategies, reach out to us at marketing@corpstrat.com

LEARN MORE IN OUR ONE-MINUTE VIDEO:

Group Disability Insurance: Just How Important Is it? (Hint: Very)

Leave a reply

Getting disabled. It’s easy to think, “that’s never going to happen to me” or “stuff like that only happens to other people”. We get it, nobody thinks they’re going to be the victims of a disability. Did you know that 1 in 7 Americans can expect to be disabled for 5 years or more? You heard us right, 1 in 7.

Most people dismiss the idea of becoming disabled without giving it a second thought. We think it’s one of the biggest mistakes employers and employees can make. Becoming disabled could be financially catastrophic, especially for families that rely on a single income. If you’re a close relative of Bill Gates or Jeff Bezos, becoming financially burdened may not be a problem for you. But if you’re not, you need to ask yourself: how are you going to replace your income in the event that you can’t work? Both business owners and employees who earn and need to continue to generate incomes must protect themselves and their families.

That’s where Group Disability Insurance comes in. Group Disability Insurance is:

1.) Extremely affordable
2.) A fantastic Employee Benefit
3.) Protection for people who need to protect others.

Some people are under the false impression that Group Disability Insurance is expensive. This couldn’t be further from the truth. In the event of the unthinkable, NOT having Group Disability Insurance is far more costly. Even though it’s not a flashy benefit, none of your employees are going to jump for joy, it’s one of the most important benefits you can provide. Because when life happens and someone gets disabled, this will be the lifeline that keeps their family financially afloat.

If you’d like to set up Group Disability Insurance for your team, contact us at marketing@corpstrat.com and we’ll get you started!

Can Employers Offer Employees Different Levels of Contribution?

Leave a reply

Today we want to share a hack around discrimination in employer contribution to employee benefit plans. The question we often receive is: Can you give different employees different levels of employer contribution?

The short answer is “Yes you Can.”

It’s commonly thought that employers don’t have a lot of discretion in designing and delivering health care benefits for their employees. But the reality is, there are many ways employers can enhance the delivery of their benefits by defining the class of eligibility. Thus creating legal and non-discriminatory ways to enhance employee benefits by class.

Now while it is possible, there are some complexities to setting it up because it touches on some issues regarding employment law and may not be advisable depending on workplace culture. But in general, an employer can create classes of employees and define the contributions or the offering of benefits to these select classes of employees.

Non-discriminatory ways to define an employee’s class of eligibility:

Generally employers have discretion when structuring their benefits plans and are able to make distinctions among employees and the benefits they’re offered. Plans may differ among employees only on “bona fide employment-based classifications”. A “bona fide employment-based classifications” might include: full-time versus part-time employee status; different geographic location; membership in a collective bargaining unit; date of hire or length of service; or differing occupations. Each of these can be treated as different groups of similarly situated individuals and receive different levels of employer contribution. For example, it is perfectly fine to offer three weeks of vacation to exempt employees and two weeks to nonexempt employees because the basis of the vacation benefit is their FLSA category and not any protected category.

The key is to make sure that benefits plan decisions are non-discriminatory, and that’s where we can help. We can make sure protected groups remain protected and design an employer contribution plan that delivers the best possible benefit while eliminating any unintentional discrimination that may result from these decisions.

–

With the current challenges in recruiting and retaining it’s a perfect time to revisit how you deliver, what you deliver, and make sure your benefit packages are competitive in helping you attract, retain, and reward the A players to move your business forward. Need help creating classes of employees and defining contributions? Let’s talk, shoot us an email at marketing@corpstrat.com