Are you tired, frustrated and disenchanted with your current options? We understand that.

Employers must pursue strategies that not only strengthen their bottom line but better equip workers to make informed health decisions, or they will likely pay a high cost in the long run (PwC Medical Cost Trend: Behind the Numbers 2016, PwC Health Research Institute).

The ultimate answer is to develop and implement a benefits package that meets the demographic, strategic and financial needs of the employer, while maintaining or enhancing employee satisfaction of the benefit plans offered.

Additional plans may be offered either as an employer-paid benefit or as an employer-sponsored benefit that is paid for by each participating employee on a voluntary basis. These benefit plans are specific to the employer’s strategic and financial needs.

Before we can begin to build your benefit program, we must first understand the particular challenges you are facing at your business. Here are some questions we like to discuss with new clients:

Employers need a benefit strategy. Raising deductibles or changing plan designs annually is not a strategy, but rather a Band-Aid.

Braden Benefit Strategies, Inc., is experienced in creating strategies to address the specifics of your company’s rising healthcare costs. We work directly with you and your employees, creating unique programs to address the factors driving your healthcare loss ratios (the number by which your future premium increases are based). Factors uncovered in the analysis are discussed above.

Here is some information about a few of the programs we instituted at companies that had specific situations driving up their healthcare costs:

• The high cost of weight
• 30% – 30% – 30%
• Rock along

Recently, V.P Southeast Region, market president at Cigna, said he would make all health insurance plans contingent on employees being proactively involved in their healthcare. Put another way, health insurance is a benefit. If a company is going to give you (an employee) this benefit, you need to do X, Y and Z. Such requirements might include annual physicals, treadmill tests at age 40 and above, annual completion of a health risk assessment (HRA), or a colonoscopy at age 50. Any number of items might be included in this list, which would be determined by the analysis above and directed at controlling ongoing healthcare cost increases.

Health insurance carrier Humana only offers its employees high deductible plans with health savings accounts. There is no copay or coinsurance employee cost sharing until after the annual deductible has been met. This program is more than eight years old and is embraced by Humana’s employees for the containment of their annual premium increase, which has been minimal.

Encouraging employees to take steps to maintain their health, incorporating wellness initiatives specific to the individual, and educating employees on how their policies work are vital keys to controlling long-term costs.

Unum’s Employee Education and Enrollment Survey, conducted by Harris Interactive in December 2012, reminds employers why it’s important to increase employee cost-sharing. Adding employee-paid voluntary benefits (for instance, after an accident or a critical illness, such as cancer) helps employees minimize their financial exposure. Using voluntary benefits helps keep employer benefit packages competitive without impacting the bottom-line. A company’s benefit offering and plan design should revolve around the findings of this study.

All the planning in the world is wasted if employees are not educated. They need to know what is covered, how their plan works, where to find answers to their questions, how to process a claim and much more – not only during open enrollment but throughout the year.

Here are five ways to help your employees make the best use of benefits:

1. Help them understand what’s being offered
2. Make plans customizable to meet individual needs
3. Offer ancillary benefits to boost financial security
4. Talk about benefits outside open enrollment
5. Make it easy to sign up

We take the work off the company’s administrative person

Here at Braden Benefit Strategies, Inc., we provide our clients and their employees with ongoing information designed to engage employees in their healthcare.

During open enrollment and throughout the year we provide our clients with valuable services, including:

• Open enrollment meetings
• Employee benefit booklets
• Employee enrollment and onboarding
• Electronic access to the employee’s individual selections
• Client-specific open enrollment meetings recorded for later use
• DOL annual employee notices