COST CONTAINMENT
Are you plagued by ever increasing benefits cost?
Have you tried various shared cost approaches that ultimately don’t lead to reduced claims?
Are you advised to change carriers, sometimes frequently, to reduce costs?
Do you know what are the reasonable and customary claims for a single or family claimant?
Is your benefit plan designed in such a way that cost containment is embraced by your employees?
The answer to these questions is central to the health of your Group Benefits Program.
I'm Curious...
To often employee cost sharing backfires and the cost of benefits decrease temporarily, only to begin their relentless march toward even higher costs.
If you think about cost sharing for a moment the following logic will be obvious. You ask your employee to pay some portion of their Health and/or Dental Premium. Regardless of the amount, the employee having money deducted from their pay, will expect to receive in return, at least that much money in benefit reimbursement.
You have set yourself up to fail. Why do this?
I'm Still Curious...
There are ways to share costs that ultimately don’t lead to increased claims. Too often advisor advise leads to increased claims and your frustration over increased costs.
You can harness the Power of Group Buying to achieve predictable and sustainable benefits costs.
Positioning Your Benefits Program as a shared responsibility aligns you and your employees together in a mutually beneficial protection of this valuable insurance policy. Using the Power of Group Buying scale and facilities, can empower you and your employees to a more sustainable program of protection.
Still Curious
You spend a lot of money on your benefits program for you and your employees. Shouldn’t you understand how these costs can be rationalized and still offer a great benefits program?
Perhaps now is the time to connect with an experienced professional and discover how we can help you benefit from our expertise?
May we invite you to give us your contact information so that we can continue the conversation?
“Kevin has provided clarity and understanding in what we need to do to achieve our goals. He’s there for us.”
“If you do cost containment you make it top down. If you want proper cost containment, get your employees to form a partnership with you so they sit back and say “Do I need to make this nuisance claim? It may make me feel good right now but at the end of the day it jeopardizes my employers’ ability to fund a comprehensive, all encompassing benefit plan because they can’t handle the benefit costs.” -K.G
Case Study 1
Dental plan 2 years in a row had rate increases. I arranged a meeting and had all employees attend one of the 3 meetings held. I asked them “If your hydro bill was increasing by 50% every year do you think you might look at how you and your family are using electricity, and maybe turn off the lights of a room you are not in? Or do you need to have 3 TV’s on when you only have one in the room? You have a dental plan and it’s gone up by 50% every year. Employers are going to call me and say “Can you do something?” And I go “The do something is you take away benefits, but your employer doesn’t want to do that. Your employer cares about your good dental health. So let me ask you this question. Could you, in consultation with your dentist figure a way to reduce the number of claims you submit without jeopardizing your good dental health? Because that would go a long way in shoring up this dental plan and not having the employer approach me to say “Figure out a way to cut costs” A hand shoots up and it turns out to be the daughter of a dentist and she is at my throat faster than you can say it and I say to her “Listen to what I said. In consultation with your dentist” If you can see yourself going to the dentist less frequently without jeopardizing your good dental health it will go a long way and make this plan viable.” I then wrote the statement on the board and watched as everyone in the room was now sitting back in their chairs, and she is the only one leaning forward. And I went “You’re isolated. The herd gets it.” The next year the plan had a decrease
Cost Containment Case Study
Owner of the firm had runaway costs. So I asked “Why are you doing this? You keep moving your plan every three years and it doesn’t benefit you. You are asking your employees to pay but it’s driving up the cost because an employee who pays $600/year for their plan wants a return and the only way to get a return is to spend $1000 in benefits. You have now encouraged them to make claims. Stop doing that!” I gave a different way to do cost containment with this group by saying “quit making the employees pay” He got something like a 19% decrease the next year at renewal so I said “Now, give them some of the money back. Improve their benefit plan and then make an announcement that because of the good things they did last year it’s freed up money in the budget so let’s give you more benefit!” The following year led to another double digit decrease, so I said he should give back a little more. Another decrease! Train them to work with you, it’s a joint plan. The employees buy into the idea because they get rewarded. It allows the employee to feel rewarded but also informed as to what you are doing for them. This all weaves into a positive corporate culture.
“Ultimately you have a Group Benefit Plan because you care about your employees and their families”