Universal Benefit Plans Blog

When Nobel Prize winning economist Milton Friedman said “nobody spends someone else’s money more carefully than their own”, he probably didn’t have healthcare spending in mind. But, there are no more perfect words than his to describe the marked shift in the way employees view (and use) healthcare when they move from a legacy plan to a high deductible one.

Tired of the “same old, same old” when it comes to enrollment meetings? You know, “Here’s your health plan. Here’s what’s changed”, so on and so forth. I’m sure you see several employees yawning in the back of your mind; maybe you’re even yawning yourself.

Even if you’re going with the same plan as last year, incorporating a few modern technologies into your presentation can make it feel a lot fresher (and a lot less like a dry film strip from a 1970s history class lecture).

Here are three great tips to get you started:

We’ve all heard about the light at the end of each tunnel and know that, regardless of the toll it took on employers everywhere, the recession will surely end one day. And when it does end, employers will begin grappling with a question they haven’t had to answer in awhile: “what strategies will we implement to help retain top employees that saw us through the economic storm?”

Take any group of employees—including highly compensated ones—gather them together to discuss disability benefits, and one thing becomes very apparent: an overall lack of understanding. Starting with our first professional job out of college, all of us are led to believe that our income protection insurance (i.e. disability plan) will pay us 60% of our annual compensation should we become disabled and unable to work.

The new dependent eligibility regulations for your health plan are among the first Federal health reform mandates to take effect. So, it goes without saying that there’s a lot of confusion and contradictory information floating around. That’s why it’s vital that employees get their facts straight and you, the employer/HR professional, communicate a consistent message across all channels.

In the effort to attract and retain top employees, employers need to be exceedingly creative, especially now that all employers must offer health plans that meet or exceed a minimum standard per PPACA regulations. In addition to our health plans, many other employer-provided benefits such as 401(k) plans have become very tightly regulated and our workforces have changed a great deal as well.

Long gone are the days when most employees stayed with the same company their entire careers. Our nation’s workforce is much more mobile so traditional standbys such as deferred compensation plans don’t make as much sense anymore.

Let me give you a hint, they’re not what HR pros think they are. At least that’s what’s revealed in a recent SHRM study. The organization surveyed employees and HR professionals on the elements they viewed as paramount to job satisfaction.

The top five according to employees were as follows:

Health and dental insurance plans are standard offerings in employee benefit packages, and have been so for a long time. And since cost control is such a major buzz word of late, insurers have developed a whole host of creative plan options that help subscribers spend benefit dollars more efficiently.

But just like the latest fashion trends, new trends in the health and dental plans arena are not “one size fits all”. Different options provide different organizations flexible ways to design plans that best meet both individual and group objectives. Here are a few emerging options in the dental plans arena.

Health care reform has long since passed and several costly federal mandates will affect our plans very soon (i.e. adult dependent eligibility extension). However, the reform law did include assurances that employers could maintain their current coverage without being subject to these mandates (that is, if they follow a few rules). In short, their current health plans would be grandfathered in.

According to the PPACA, a grandfathered plan is an employment-based group health plan or individual insurance coverage that existed as of March 23, 2010 (the date health reform law was passed). Just last week the Department of Labor, the Treasury and Department of Health and Human Services released their interim final regulations regarding grandfathered health plans.