Do you know your numbers?  Unless you know your numbers, the breakdown of how your employees are spending your healthcare premium dollars, you do not know how to evaluate what you are paying your insurance company.

If you are adjusting deductibles, co-pays and even maximum out-of-pocket costs at renewal, in an attempt to keep the monthly premiums affordable, you are managing health insurance the old fashion way and probably not providing your employees with the best health insurance coverage while costing your company money.

In fact, there are ways in today’s climate to provide better, more comprehensive coverage while saving money.  How?

Summary:
Small manufacturing company was struggling to understand consistent rate increases.  Through analysis of the company’s healthcare claims expenditures, medical conditions and history we were able to determine why annual premiums continued to increase and develop a long-term strategy.

Background:
Recently a company with 37 employees approached Braden Benefits to discuss their group health insurance premium.  The company paid average wages and compensated employees with a highly valued employee benefit package including minimum out-of-pocket cost for healthcare and health insurance.  The company began looking at their annual premium increases which were; 23% in 2007, 35% in ’08, 15.4% in 2009, and 28% in 2010.

The Challenge:
How to maintain great health insurance benefits at an affordable cost now and in the future.

The Solution:
To truly understand this company’s dilemma, we took a step back and looked at the variables. By being too close to the problem and only seeing traditional solutions, real answers became unattainable to the employer.
Diving into the numbers, we learned:

• Of the 14 monthly maintenance prescriptions being used, 5 were available on the $4 prescription drug list, 3 others had generic alternative that were also on the $4 drug list. 
• In 2009 only 7 of the 37 employees on the coverage actually used the deductible, of these 6 used the entire $500 and the 7th person used less than 50% of the deductible.  In 2010 the deductible numbers were even more telling as only 2 people used the entire $500 deductible and 2 others used less than 50%.
• Mail order prescriptions were not being utilized.  Employees were spending too much of their own money to obtain the medications they needed.
• There was a very high incidence of high blood pressure and high cholesterol medications being used by the overall group.

The Results:

• We put together a campaign to educate employees on their benefits and how to best ‘work the system’ to receive the most from their healthcare insurance while paying as little out of pocket expense as possible.
• We instituted a deductible reimbursement plan and increased the deductible by $500; the company paid the difference between the current deductible and the new deductible.  This saved the company a significant amount of premium. If an employee used the $500 deductible, the employer reimbursed them.  Between the premium savings and the actual cost of the deductible reimbursement, the employer saw an overall reduction in their healthcare cost.
• We provided one-on-one confidential discussions for employees to answer questions specific to the employee’s unique medical situation.
• Working with employees and showing them the difference in their cost (not the savings to the company) employees could make an informed decision about how they purchased prescription drugs and actually save money.
• We recognize it is difficult for most people to talk to their doctor concerning changing doctor recommended care including prescription drugs.  We have developed a generic fax that only requires the employee to ‘fill-in-the-blanks’ and send their request to their doctor.
• We created a wellness campaign around the high blood pressure and high cholesterol using the programs currently available through the current insurance carrier.  There is no additional cost for employees to participate in these programs and in fact the programs are inclusive in their medical insurance.