Increase in premiums

Whatever

Just got notification of health insurance premium increases. There are options to limit the increase to the employer (we're considering increasing the co-pay for medical visits and either increasing copay for drug benefits or limiting benefits to the formulary list for non-union employees). Unforunately, we limited by our union contract. I'm wondering what others are doing or thinking about doing.

Nat

We too will be facing significant increases in our premiums (20% - 50%). What our broker and I do is look at cutting benefits for or increasing co-pays/co-insurances for what we consider the exceptions such as hospitalizaitons, emergency room visits, urgent care center visits,etc. We will also look at increasing deductibles. I try to look at those things before I look at increasing doctor office visit co-pays or prescription co-pays. Last year we increased our Specialist co-pay from $30 to $40 and it dropped our premiums significantly. We are also looking at an HRA, Health Reimbursement Arrangement. It's not a self-insured arrangement but is similar. The website that gives information is dbsbenefits.com. Quite an interesting concept. A good broker can help also. We have a very aggressive broker who really does look out for our best interest and not just his pocketbook. We shop around every year. Good luck.

Tony Kessler

Whatever,
I don't want to discourage any fresh responses here because many on the Forum have probably gone through exactly what you're talking about in recent months. But I do want to aim you toward a very rich source of comments and insights on this topic that were just collected and added to this website. More than 2,000 HR and benefits pros responded to our HR Hero Line survey on the rising cost of employee benefits. We compiled the results and posted them in the database just within the last few days. If you're a newsletter subscriber and you want to see the results, go to the home page and log in (upper right corner). On the next screen, the link to the survey results will also be in the upper right corner.

The answers to the "official" questions were interesting, but what was really intriguing was that so many HR professionals took the opportunity to "vent their spleens" about the barrel that the health insurers have them over (as one respondent put it). There are literally hundreds of "posts" to look at (keep scrolling toward the end of the survey). Most were extremely concerned about the rising costs. Many wrote in detail about the steps that their companies have taken to deal with the rising premiums. Hope this helps.

Tony Kessler, Director of Editorial
M. Lee Smith Publishers
(615) 661-0249 ext. 8068