benefits-plans

Health Care Compliance: What Is It?

Benefits, Benefits Plans, Employee Benefits, Group Health, Health Insurance, Health Plans, Healthcare, Human Resources, Mental Health, Open Enrollment

When your company decides to offer health care coverage to employees, you’re banking on the overall benefit to employee morale, retention rates, and health. While health benefits are indeed an excellent way to retain top employees and invest in their long-term health, implementing a health plan automatically requires you to follow a slew of compliance regulations.

These compliance regulations are designed to protect the interests of your plan participants and ensure you're following federal and state mandates for health plan operation.

by Chris Freitas

Changing Health Insurance Outside of Open Enrollment

Benefits, Benefits Plans, Employee Benefits, Group Health, Health Insurance, Health Plans, Healthcare, Human Resources, Mental Health, Open Enrollment

Each year, businesses offer employees the opportunity to sign up for, reevaluate, change, cancel, or otherwise adjust their healthcare plan during the open enrollment period. This timeframe also applies to individuals who participate in government-based Marketplace health plans on some level, which has an enrollment deadline in mid-August.

Generally, employees are not able to engage in any insurance-related activity outside the open enrollment timeframe. However, there are some exceptions to the rule.

To help employees interested in changing health insurance outside of open enrollment, keep reading.

by Chris Freitas

Mental Health Parity Rules: What Are the Changes to the Act?

Benefits, Benefits Plans, Employee Benefits, Group Health, Health Insurance, Health Plans, Healthcare, Human Resources, Mental Health

The efforts to recognize mental health issues as critical as physical issues have gone on for several decades. Finally, in 1996, the Mental Health Parity Act (MHPA) was enacted to prohibit large group health plans from imposing limits on mental health benefits, especially when less than favorable limits were imposed on surgical or medical benefits.

by Chris Freitas

How to Avoid an Employment-Related Lawsuit: 5 Practices to Follow

Benefits, Benefits Plans, Employee Benefits, Group Health, Health Insurance, Health Plans, Healthcare, Human Resources, Insurance, Teamwork

When companies start to approach the big 5-0 in terms of staffing, Human Resource (HR) teams face new levels of intensity when it comes to legal matters. It’s far easier to maintain a one-on-one approach to employee relations and compliance with smaller numbers. However, once your business reaches the level of success where you need more people to drive that momentum, you incur more risk.

by Chris Freitas

How Did COVID-19 Affect the Insurance Market?

Benefits, Benefits Plans, Employee Benefits, Group Health, Health Insurance, Health Plans, Healthcare, Human Resources, Insurance, Teamwork

More than a year since the start of the pandemic, we are continuing to monitor the ripple effects on business operations worldwide. As one of the most highly visible – and scrutinized – sectors of the economy, the health insurance sector was forced to grapple with an extraordinary crisis. Although insurance analysts will be studying the influence of COVID-19 for years to come – and some of the pandemic’s effects have yet to be determined – here’s what we know about the impact of COVID-19 on the insurance market so far.

by Chris Freitas

How to Reduce the Cost of Employee Benefits and Optimize Spend

Benefits, Benefits Plans, Contribution Limits, Employee Benefits, Employees, Employers, Employment, Equality, Insurance

Now that we’ve completed our five-part blog series focused on optimizing your benefits plan, we hope you feel more informed and empowered to reduce the cost of employee benefits. Given the ever-increasing costs associated with healthcare, everyone needs to adopt the right option and develop the best strategy to save their business and employees.

by Chris Freitas

Captive & Consortium Health Plans: How to Save Costs on Your Benefits

Benefits, Benefits Plans, Contribution Limits, Employee Benefits, Employees, Employers, Employment, Equality, Insurance

Year after year, you watch the cost of your company’s group health insurance continue to rise. According to the Kaiser Family Foundation, the average single and family premiums increased by 4% in 2020. Many employers searching for unconventional ways to offset costs are now considering alternative methods to funding their plans. Captive and consortium health plans offer two possible options of self-funding that can help contain costs and lower your overall risk. If you want to continue offering high-quality benefits and enjoy the advantages of a flexible self-funded program, these two options may be worth the consideration.

As we launch this fifth and final post in our Health Plan Cost Optimization series, let’s take a look at how captive and consortium health plans work, how they differ, and how they can help you save money on health plan costs.

by Chris Freitas

Self-Funded Insurance Plans: How to Save Costs on Your Benefits Program

Benefits, Benefits Plans, Contribution Limits, Employee Benefits, Employees, Employers, Employment, Equality, Insurance

As we launch this fourth post in our ongoing Health Plan Cost Optimization series, it’s time to take a closer look at self-funded insurance plans. Whether a fully insured or level-funded insurance plan isn’t right for your organization, or you need more information to make your final decision, we hope you find this look at self-funded plans helpful.

by Chris Freitas

Partially Self-Funded Plans: How to Save Costs on Benefits Programs

Benefits, Benefits Plans, Contribution Limits, Employee Benefits, Employees, Employers, Employment, Equality, Insurance

Traditionally, businesses looking for alternatives in health plan offerings faced a choice between conventional fully-funded plans and self-insured plans. If you’ve been searching for a way to limit your health plan costs but balked at the risks of a self-funded plan, you might want to consider a partially self-funded health plan. These plans borrow elements from both fully-funded and self-funded plans and offer a great stepping stone in the direction of self-funding.

Partially self-funded plans allow you to explore self-funding, lower your health plan costs and still provide high-quality benefits to your employees in the process.

Let’s take a look at partially self-funded plans, how they work, and how they can help your company save on health plan costs.

by Chris Freitas

Self-Funded Insurance Plans: How to Save Costs on Benefits Programs

Benefits, Benefits Plans, Contribution Limits, Employee Benefits, Employees, Employers, Employment, Equality, Insurance

After discussing the fully insured model for health benefits in our first blog post of the series, you might want to learn more about some of the alternatives we discussed there, including level-funded insurance plans.

Is a level-funded plan right for your small-to-medium-sized business? Business leaders across all industries and sectors continually ask themselves the same question, wondering how to best serve their employees while cutting costs.

Let’s continue our series by taking a closer look at level-funded plans and what they can do for your organization and employees.

by Chris Freitas