{"id":118897,"date":"2020-11-23T23:48:32","date_gmt":"2020-11-23T20:48:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/en.buradabiliyorum.com\/employers-start-sending-workers-shopping-for-health-coverage\/"},"modified":"2020-11-23T23:48:32","modified_gmt":"2020-11-23T20:48:32","slug":"employers-start-sending-workers-shopping-for-health-coverage","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/employers-start-sending-workers-shopping-for-health-coverage\/","title":{"rendered":"#Employers start sending workers shopping for health coverage"},"content":{"rendered":"

“#Employers start sending workers shopping for health coverage<\/strong>”
\n<\/p>\n

\n Instead of offering one or more options, some companies are turning health insurance shopping over to employees.<\/p>\n

A federal rule change last year stoked this new app<\/a>roach. It allows employers to reimburse workers for coverage they bought without paying a tax penalty.<\/p>\n

The concept sends employees to individual insurance markets where they can find more choices for coverage. It also protects employers from huge annual cost spikes. But it\u2019s a big change for workers who are used to having their employer give them benefit choices every year.<\/p>\n

This new approach \u2014 known as an Individual Coverage Health Reimbursement Arrangement or ICHRA \u2014 started with coverage plans for this year. More workers will likely see them offered this fall during their company\u2019s annual sign-up window for 2021 coverage.<\/p>\n

Benefits experts say the idea is drawing interest from employers, but they expect the option to grow slowly over the next few years.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are seeing much more cautious adoption of it,\u201d said Alan Silver, senior director of health and benefits for the consulting firm Willis Towers Watson.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s how it works: Employees pick a plan that works best for them, sometimes with help from an outside company hired by their employer. Then the employer reimburses them, at least partially, for the cost.<\/p>\n

Benefits consultants say the accounts can be attractive to companies that have been hammered by insurance costs or want to offer benefits to attract new employees but haven\u2019t been able to afford them.<\/p>\n

Element Designs, with about 65 employees, switched earlier this year. The Charlotte, North Carolina, custom door maker was facing a 60% price hike for its old coverage plan. That would have followed a 50% increase from the year before.<\/p>\n

The company couldn\u2019t absorb those hikes. But human resources manager Kymberlee Hernandez said they also couldn\u2019t tell employees in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic, \u201cHey guys, by the way, we\u2019re not going to have health care this year.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThis was definitely a good alternative for us,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

The company is reimbursing employees $500 per month for their coverage and another $300 if they have dependents.<\/p>\n

Employee Olivia Banks found the new approach daunting at first. But a company hired by her employer, Take Command Health, helped Banks figure out which plans would include her doctors and what sort of expenses she could handle.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe benefit on the other side is a plan that\u2019s tailored more towards you,\u201d said the account manager.<\/p>\n

The federal government estimates that once employers get used to the new rule, more than 11 million workers and family members will get insurance this way.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s a relatively small slice of the market for employer-sponsored health insurance, which covered about 157 million people last year, according to the non-profit Kaiser Family Foundation.<\/p>\n

HealthSherpa, a company that helps people find coverage in the insurance marketplaces, said it is working with more than 50 employers to start the coverage switch between this month and January. Separately, it also is helping individuals with ICHRAs find coverage through an app it debuted in July.<\/p>\n

The coronavirus pandemic has strained some employer budgets and made them start thinking about insurance alternatives, HealthSherpa co-founder Cat Perez said.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s definitely picked up as the pandemic has played on,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Like with most insurance plans, shoppers will have to read the fine print when they search individual coverage markets. A plan that seems like a bargain could require customers to pay several thousand dollars in deductibles before most coverage starts or deal with much bigger prescription bills than they are used to.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou\u2019re definitely going to reach into your pocket more,\u201d said Katherine Hempstead, a health care researcher with the non-profit Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.<\/p>\n

The new option is expected to grow first with small businesses and in places where employers think the insurance market offers enough coverage choices.<\/p>\n

Beth Carter\u2019s marketing agency, Clariant Creative, adopted the approach earlier this year because more typical employer-sponsored health insurance was both unaffordable and an administrative headache.<\/p>\n

\u201cFinding the right coverage was just ridiculously painful,\u201d said Carter, whose Naperville, Illinois, business has only six full-time employees.<\/p>\n

New employee Sara Schleicher was drawn to the idea. Previous employers had high-deductible plans that would have exposed her to big medical bills. The 29-year-old marketing specialist wanted something with more protection partially because she likes to ride motorcycles. She wound up with a low-deductible plan.<\/p>\n

\u201cI feel better knowing that I have insurance even if I don\u2019t need to use it that often,\u201d the St. Augustine, Florida, resident said. \u201cThis really has given me access to options that I might not necessarily have had otherwise.\u201d\n <\/p><\/div>\n

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Source<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“#Employers start sending workers shopping for health coverage” Instead of offering one or more options, some companies are turning health insurance shopping over to employees. A federal rule change last year stoked this new approach. It allows employers to reimburse workers for coverage they bought without paying a tax penalty. The concept sends employees to…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":118898,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/nypost.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2020\/11\/healthcare.jpg?quality=90&strip=all&w=1200","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[70897],"tags":[81100,1545,74781,73014],"class_list":["post-118897","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-11-23-20","tag-coronavirus","tag-employers","tag-health-care"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/118897","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=118897"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/118897\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/118898"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=118897"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=118897"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=118897"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}