5 Ways to Slash Health Insurance Costs
1. Have your Broker shop the market even in good years. Adopt the same techniques as if you're facing insurmountable increases.
2. Be careful who you are covering. You can try to eliminate coverage for spouses and family members if they can get insurance at the spouse's workplace. You can incent your employees to do this. If you are in a survival mode, it may not make employees happy, but it's better than terminating coverage altogether.
3. Consider an HSA (Health Savings Account). While few companies have implemented HSAs, that number is likely to change in the next couple of years. HSAs put individuals in charge of spending their own money on everyday medical needs while still having coverage for serious conditions. Offer an HSA next to a traditional plan and let employees "buy-up" or pay the difference between the two premiums.
4. Tweak the finer points of your plan such as putting a deductible on your Rx benefit, adding an in-network deductible to services outside the doctor's office, using a less expensive network that your insurance carrier might offer, offering split copays (a higher copay to visit a specialist than a primary care physician), raising copays and deductibles.
5. Check your waiting period for new hires. If you find that your annual turnover shows new employees leaving within the first six months, extend the waiting period to six months, for example.
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