No one is happy with their insurance cost! I hear this all the time from employers or their HR when I call to try to have a chat about how I could help them lower costs. Everyone would like their insurance cost to be lowered. The question I have is “why are they doing something about it?”
- Is it too complicated?
- is it too time consuming?
- Is it a hassle?
- Or, are employers content taking rate increase?
I understand the task of evaluating health insurance can be overwhelming if you’re not talking to the right person. Brokers and consultants try to make things very complicated so that they can justify their existence, while maintaining the current status quo with BUCA (Blue Cross, United, Cigna, Aetna). They get paid a lot of money to sell BUCA insurance programs to their clients. More money than you can even imagine! There’s so much undisclosed money under the table it would blow your mind!
The Consolidate Appropriations Act is supposed to change that, but most employers I talk to don’t know what I’m talking about when I mention it. They don’t exercise their Fiduciary responsibility of asking their broker or consultant how much revenue they’re receiving directly or indirectly from all sources, or they’re somewhat embarrassed to ask for some reason.
I recently did an analysis of a municipality in Ohio of their health plan with United Healthcare. Depending upon the programs that they choose to implement the savings were between 23% and 54%. They said that they heard things from me that their broker had never mentioned before. Why is that? Their broker is a big national company, yet they continue to recommend United Healthcare and justify the 18.9% renewal they delivered in January. What business can afford to have that kind of increase on one of their highest expenses on the P&L? What kind of company would accept that sort of increase from their suppliers?
Do yourself a favor and take 30 minutes to talk to someone who’s in the know and understands what the possibilities are (most likely not your current broker). You’d be shocked and amazed what you can do.
