HRA with a HDHP and Defined Contribution

If you are struggling to harness your health insurance premium increases and your rising per employee/year costs; look no further. It is probably time to take a look at an IRS-qualified high-deductible health plan with a corporate health reimbursement arrangement (HRA). You can also couple this with a defined contribution, or dollar amount/employee/month, and roll your company and staff in to a portal like Health Insurance Geeks to shop on their own. We can report back what folks over-spend and turn that in to a monthly pre-tax contribution for them through your payroll vendor. This is insurance 3.0 and what most brokers, carriers and other entities are not talking about a lot as we are in the middle of reform, and changes, and this scalps both of their revenue/commission flow. We are a tribe, an army if you will, of savvy folks blowing up the current system, in the name of consumerism. Once we have the right products in place, healthy consumerism for medical services will commence and that will end in pricing coming down dramatically, which in turn will stabilize premium structure. Remember we pay in premium for carriers to cover our healthcare needs which are held ransom by hospitals and physicians charging fees that can swing by 500-1000% from to the other, for no particular rhyme, or reason - for the exact same services. We have no real explanation, other than where someone went to school? Hard to quantify.

Consumer-Directed Health Plans

As we are in 2013, we are seeing the amount of small employers (2-199 employees)offering group health insurance decrease; and also the amount of employees participating in offered plans by employers decrease too. What does that mean? Well it means we have even bigger challenges to face once Jan 2014 comes and the next phase of the PPACA (Affordable Care Act/Obamacare) is implemented. If folks are not participating in plans now because of costs, what is going to happen when premiums rise, and Americans are forced to buy insurance or face tax penalties? Many think not much, while others say a windfall of Americans will jump on to plans. We are also seeing the amount of employer's subsidies of health insurance premiums for family plans decrease (2012 was hovering around 40%) and we are expecting that number to continue to climb to 50% throughout the coming years. The good news about the ACA for consumers are private health insurance exchanges. It seems public exchanges are getting TONS of pushback at the state level, though private exchanges are gaining momentum. For consumers whether they buy from carriers directly, public exchanges, or private exchanges, and with or without an advisor/broker, the prices will be fixed. A recent Kaiser study found 25% of folks in MASS Connector plans found it extremely hard to understand plans, and would always prefer having some kind of advisor. Assuming the section of polled folks was enough, many argue that an advisor is critical. More to follow from the Geeks at Health Insurance Geeks.