Three Things to Consider Before Choosing Your Group Health Insurance Plans

Three Things to Consider Before Choosing A Group Health Insurance Plan

Whether it’s your first time choosing group health insurance plans for your business, or you’re simply choosing the latest offerings for the year, there are three important things that you should consider. Taking the time to really think about these key points helps to ensure you keep expenditures to a minimum and that your employees are fully covered against all possible eventualities.

The Cost

The overall cost of your plan is important. If it’s too expensive, you could be eating into your business’s profit margins. Whereas if it’s too cheap, you’re likely to be saving money but missing out on important coverage. It’s best to let the demographics of your company decide whether you go for a high-premium, low-deductible plan or vice-versa. As a younger demographic may be prepared to pay much higher deductibles because it’s likely that they won’t visit the doctor as often as their older counterparts.

The Coverage

What’s covered by your plan is arguably more important than the cost. At the very least, your ideal plan should cover the following:

• Outpatient and inpatient care
• ER visits
• Pre- and post-natal care
• Mental health and substance use disorder services
• Prescription medications
• Treatments for chronic conditions
• Preventative services, such as vaccines
• Pediatric services

Choosing a leading carrier will help you to get this wide range of coverage. Keep in mind, that certain plans may have limits to how many times certain services are able to be accessed by your employees.

The Network of Healthcare Providers

It’s important to understand whether your group insurance plan requires employees to visit a pre-approved list of healthcare providers or whether they can choose their own. Health Maintenance Organizations (HMOs) will insist that your employees only visit approved doctors that are a part of their network and will generally require your employees to seek approval directly from the carrier, if they have plans to see another doctor. Whereas a Preferred Provider Organization (PPO), which will usually be the more expensive of the two options, will let employees choose their own doctor.

How Benely Can Help

Sound complicated? You’re right, it is. Thankfully, our team are industry experts who are able to analyze your business to make sure you get what’s right for you. Also, we’re able to meet with your employees on an individual basis to ensure that they get exactly what they need. Let us take care of the hard work for you while you focus on what you do best — growing your business.