ATHENS, Pa. — Obviously, one of the major concerns when making the decision to offer health care benefits or selecting a plan for your employees is cost. Healthcare costs rarely drop each year making it difficult to start or continue offering benefits. There are several steps you can take to help manage your costs.
1. Work with an experienced representative.
You’re not a health insurance specialist, so you should make sure you work with one. It’s important to find and agent or broker you can trust who has years of experience and access to multiple programs. A good agent will utilize plan design and competition in the marketplace – among other things – to build a plan that meets your needs and your budget
2. Access to wellness programs and technology.
Technology and wellness programs are becoming important tools in managing healthcare. On-line wellness management systems help to engage employees and encourage them to make healthy choices using fun, easy, and trackable activity platforms. Easy access to doctors through telemedicine services such as video chats, phone consulting and mobile aps is becoming an increasingly important option. Your agent should be able to help set up access to all these services.
3. Utilize flexible contribution programs
Flexible spending arrangements like Health Savings Accounts (HSA), Flexible Spending Accounts (FSA) or Health Reimbursement Arrangements (HRA) can help manage costs. These plans allow you as the employer (HRA or FSA) and your employee (FSA or HSA) to contribute to an account that can be used to pay for approved medical expenses often on a pre-tax basis. These tools, along with plan design, help manage health care premiums and as the employer, you maintain control over the program.
4. Keep track of legislation
You shouldn’t have to constantly monitor changes in healthcare legislation – changes to regulations happen constantly! Your agent should be able to keep track of updates to laws surrounding healthcare and keep you up to date ensuring you are compliant and can act quickly if updates to your plan are needed.
5. Advocate and Educate
In the event of a claim, your agent should advocate on your behalf and for your employee. You should also have access to on-line tools and expertise to educate your employees helping them make better choices which can lead to lower costs for both of you.
Agri-Services Agency has representatives around the country, we’re a healthcare partner you can trust. ASA has been providing healthcare solutions to the agriculture industry for 50 years. We can help design cost effective health plans for small businesses with only a few employees or large multi-location operations with hundreds of employees.
Give us a call today at 1-877-466-9089 or visit our website at agri-servicesagency.com for more information on what we can offer. You can also click here to fill out a form and request additional information. We look forward to hearing from you!
–Agri-Services Agency