Employee Benefits
In today's ever-evolving healthcare landscape, managing employee benefits can feel overwhelming. Rising costs, lack of transparency, and an influx of confusing options often leave employers feeling powerless.
Regain control over healthcare costs.
The Challenges Businesses Face
Endless Price Increases: Healthcare premiums rise annually, often outpacing wage growth.
Lack of Control: With traditional insurance, employers have little say in the cost of care.
Opaque Pricing: Most business owners aren't aware of what drives their premiums or the cost of care.
Rising Deductibles: Employees are forced to bear more of the cost, affecting morale and retention.Here's some stuff
Common Employee Benefits Structures
Understanding the various funding models available is the first step in choosing a plan that fits your business.
1. Fully Insured Plans
With fully insured plans, you pay a fixed premium to the insurer each month. This option is ideal for businesses that prefer a predictable expense. However, it provides limited flexibility and often includes rising premiums without a clear reason. The insurer keeps any unused funds, even if your employees had fewer claims.
2. Level-Funded Plans
This hybrid option combines the predictability of fully insured plans with some of the financial advantages of self-funding. Your business pays a set monthly amount to cover claims, administrative costs, and stop-loss insurance. If claims are lower than expected, your business may receive a refund. This model offers more control and transparency without overwhelming risk.
3. Self-Funded Plans
In a self-funded arrangement, your business pays for claims as they are incurred. Stop-loss insurance is included to protect against unexpectedly high claims. Self-funding offers maximum control and transparency, allowing businesses to keep unused premium dollars and better manage costs. This option is best suited for businesses with healthy cash flow and a desire for greater customization.
Reference-Based Pricing: A Modern Solution
One cutting-edge cost-containment strategy is reference-based pricing. This model reimburses healthcare providers a fixed amount, often tied to Medicare rates, regardless of the provider chosen. It eliminates network restrictions, giving your employees more flexibility and helping your business avoid inflated costs.
Many modern employee benefits packages now include supplementary services that go beyond traditional coverage:
Virtual Health Options: Offer your employees access to telemedicine, including mental health services, reducing unnecessary visits and boosting convenience.
Chronic Condition Management: Programs like cancer coaching and musculoskeletal health management help employees manage long-term health issues more effectively, lowering overall claims costs.
The Benefits of Customized Solutions
Every business is unique, and your benefits should reflect that. Tailored solutions provide:
Transparency: You'll understand what drives your healthcare costs.
Control: Take charge of how claims are funded and receive refunds for lower-than-expected claims.
Simplicity: Managing your benefits doesn’t have to be complicated. Today’s plans are designed with simplicity in mind, offering a comprehensive approach that includes everything from plan design to stop-loss insurance.
Why Choose Flexible Benefits?
When you offer tailored, transparent benefits to your employees, you create a more engaged and loyal workforce. Investing in their well-being helps to attract and retain talent, ultimately boosting your company's success.
Ready to take control of your employee benefits? Book a consultation today to discover how you can save on healthcare costs while providing your team with the benefits they deserve.
Voluntary Life Insurance Can Add Security At Any Stage.
As employees travel through various life stages, reassessing their life insurance needs is important to make sure they have sufficient coverage as their needs change and inflation increases. Voluntary life insurance is a good way employees can add security at any life stage:
- Newlyweds with no children don’t need extremely large amounts of life insurance coverage, but should make sure their spouse could make ends meet if the other dies, especially if they have a mortgage. Also, cash value insurance is more affordable at younger ages and while they’re in good health.
- Preparing for retirement — For many, life insurance needs are less after retirement than in other life stages, and term insurance may end around this time. Yet maintaining an adequate amount of life insurance is still important — final health care costs, funeral expenses, surviving spouse’s standard of living, children’s inheritance — all of these circumstances should be considered when evaluating life insurance needs for the golden years.
- Married with children — Coverage needs increase significantly to make sure children can be cared for and meet college goals if a parent passes away, in addition to protecting the surviving spouse. This is an ideal time to add term life coverage to existing cash value life coverage.
- Single again — Approximately 38 percent of U.S. marriages end in divorce, according to the National Center for Health Statistics. That’s why it’s important for employees who find themselves single again to reassess their life insurance needs, especially if they have children.
- Change in financial status — As employees’ careers progress or if they receive a significant inheritance, their life insurance needs may also increase, yet most wealthy Americans are not adequately covered.
The Life Insurance Protection Gap
The majority of employees believe it’s important for their employer to offer insurance benefits, and the workplace continues to be a leading source for obtaining life insurance coverage.
By providing a variety of voluntary life insurance benefits for your employees, you can help them secure the financial protection they need in various life stages without affecting your organization’s bottom line.
BlackIron offers a variety of employee-paid voluntary cash value life and term life insurance products through the convenience of payroll deduction. Most of these products are portable so your employees can maintain their life insurance protection if they retire or change jobs.
- Cash value life products — Employees need individually owned cash value life insurance as the anchor of their life insurance protection. Relying only on benefits through their workplace is risky, and the younger they are when they purchase cash value life protection, the more affordable it is. Benefit levels may change as the insured’s needs change.
- Term life products — These voluntary products offer higher coverage amounts at lower premiums for life stages where coverage needs are greater. Term life insurance can help families cover mortgage payments, child care, saving toward retirement, children’s college expenses and other life stages when financial demands are high in the event of a premature death.
- Other options — Some voluntary products offer additional life insurance as a rider. These optional riders offer an affordable way to expand life insurance coverage for specific needs and for immediate family members.
Help Your Employees Bridge The Gap
Voluntary life insurance can provide a needed balance between employer-provided and individually owned coverage. BlackIron’s voluntary cash value and term life insurance products, combined with our expertise in benefits communication, can help you make sure your employees understand their life insurance needs and can get adequate life insurance protection as they progress through life’s stages. And because premiums are employee-paid, you provide the protection employees need at no direct cost to your company.
BlackIron Financial