Fixed Cost Benefits

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"3 things White House doesn't want you to know about ObamaCare, plus 3 things coming in 2015 you aren’t going to like @drudgereportapp"

"3 things White House doesn't want you to know about ObamaCare, plus 3 things coming in 2015 you aren’t going to like @drudgereportapp"

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What Can The Hotel Industry Teach You About Increasing Employee Benefits AND Lowering Costs?

Yes you can do both, and they don’t have to be mutually exclusive. You really can have it your way and improve your employee benefits while lowering costs. So how can this be? Sounds too good to be true? Let’s take a look at the overall marketplace for why this is, how the hotel industry can teach us something, and then we’ll show you a specific case study for you to see for yourselves.

In the 1-50 employee company size niche, you are an employer that represents the majority of American employers, and you would think you would be recognized as a true hero. Yet reality is quite different in that most companies chase higher dollars and higher profits. This means you are small potatoes. Most employee benefits firms are really interested in the over 100 employee segment and spend most of their resources chasing and servicing these businesses.

So what does this leave for the 1-50 employee company? There’s about a 90% chance that the answer is that you have not been shown any creative ideas to show you how to lower your costs. Moreover, your benefits broker, usually brings you a piece of paper asking you to sign a renewal for another year of the same benefits package for a rate increase. That’s it! Your company bends over backwards to provide creative solutions in the marketplace and you are too busy running this business to have time to proactively research your best benefits options. So deep down inside you hope your benefits broker is doing this for you. You wait for them to show for the annual renewal and just maybe they might bring a competitive matrix to show you the different carriers they shopped to see who your best option would be. Yet sadly, there’s about a 90% chance, that you didn’t even get this. Instead, they show up with one piece of paper asking for a rate increase.

What does the hotel industry have to teach those of us as small businesses as to how we might get a better deal for our employee benefits with our group health insurance plans? Well let’s say you’re planning a trip for your family out of town. You look up the hotel you want to stay at and call in to haggle for the best rate, rather than just booking it online. The front desk picks up and you ask, “Can you give me your very best rate?” You feel empowered that you asked for the best upfront as you are not messing around. Let’s say they quoted you $210 per night. You then wonder what else you can do. Quickly, you remember you are an AAA member and ask if you can get a discount with this membership. You were delighted to learn they would drop the rate down to $180, and if you are like most people, you believe you have done all you can do. However, if you had an experienced travel agent working for you, they know you wouldn’t end there. In fact, they are just warming up. They would then ask, “So what would the best non-refundable rate be?” Now the rate goes down to $160. Your heart begins to beat faster as you begin to realize what this per night savings could do for your family’s budget. Then the next question, "That sounds like a great rate, but do you have any limited time offers available right now?” As it turns out you were able to get a rate down to just $135 per night AND free parking was thrown in too. So by knowing how to play the game with the right travel agent, you saved $75 per night or 35%.

Nice story, but what does this have to do with my employee benefits package. Well let’s swap out the experienced travel agent for an experienced employee benefits consultant…..mmmhmmmm, like Fixed Cost Benefits, and see how they can play the game for you. We start out by learning what you have now, so you can objectively assess what your baseline is. This baseline will be your measure for how good a deal we put together for you by enhanced benefits and/or lowered costs. Then we use the approach, the travel agent used in the above paragraph, to find you more opportunity for cost savings. Once you see how significant the cost savings are, you can decide if you would like to use some or all of this savings to enhance existing benefits or even add new ones. So now you are in a position of profit and control for moving forward…..as opposed to your broker showing up with no options but to sign on for another year of the same thing for a higher cost.

Let’s show you a real world example for how we do this. We just talked to a company that was paying $170,000 per year in medical benefits, with no non-med benefits like dental, vision, life/AD&D, STD & LTD etc. Their benefits broker has been using the same carrier for years and they’ve been paying increasing premiums year after year for a while now. We started out by reviewing the best carriers for this company’s needs and found a more appropriate one right away that was the same quality of company they had currently, but was at a far better price. Next, we know how to arrange the plan design of your small business employee benefits package so the employees can enjoy the same level of benefits, doctor access, out of pocket exposure etc., and get a significant discount. In this case, through creative plan design, we reduced the cost down to $140,000 for a better medical plan that offered the employees more choice to customize their coverage for the employee benefits they want. We then explored how we could use the annual $30,000 savings and apply this toward other non-med benefits to give the employees more. We were able to add dental, vision, life, and LTD for $167,000 and still saved the company a little money while providing a whole lot more in benefits.

So as you can see, it really is important to find the right small business employee benefits consultant to help you. If you are now asking yourself why your broker hasn’t shared this idea with you, shouldn’t the real question you should be asking is, “Why am I still working them?” If you are thinking this right now, then contact us today so we can show you how we could work with you and what your numbers would look like today for immediate savings.

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Obama: Healthcare Costs Rising Because Americans Not 'Shopping Effectively Enough’ - Is This True?

In the news story “Obama: Healthcare Costs Rising Because Americans Not 'Shopping Effectively Enough’ dated 10/6/2014 by Curtis Kalin (http://www.cnsnews.com/mrctv-blog/curtis-kalin/obama-healthcare-costs-rising-because-americans-not-shopping-effectively) I'm continually disappointed at Obama’s lack of accountability for policies he's put in place and how they affect the pricing of the marketplace. The government taking over 1/6 of the economy under the impression of improving things for all of us, does not hold water from our perspective as free market solutions find the best efficiencies to solve a problem in this space. See below for how we do this for employers with 1-50 employees.

However, it did make me think for a moment how there is some truth in what he was saying. Companies that fall under 50 employees do not really receive the best advice from employee benefits consultants/brokers/agents. I've found the reason is that these benefits consultants merely pull a quote from a health insurance company on the lowest deductible/coinsurance option so employees would find the coverage attractive. Then, at every annual policy renewal, they show up to the employer with a rate increase in hand. Not really much more advice or value added here. Are these companies too small to merit more proactive strategy in policy design?

At Fixed Cost Benefits, we don't think so at all. In fact, this is why we specialize in the 1-50 employee company space for providing top caliber benefits at a significant discount off the typical approach outlined above. Obama is actually correct to some degree. When companies pay premiums on policies with low deductibles, the company is over-paying in cost for the benefit of 100% of employees to have such a low out-of-pocket expense, if they actually had to file a claim sizable enough to pay the full out-of-pocket exposure. Yet, what percentage of employees of this company on an annual basis actually file this level of claims?

Ah, that's the question. Let’s look at a real world case we are working on right now to illustrate this point. We are helping a company currently where the out-of-pocket is only $1k, and yet there is less than 10% of the employees that have used this level of benefits for as long as they have had health insurance. So the company over-pays their premium every year, to cover 100% of the employees SHOULD they need to file a claim. Fixed Cost Benefits, shows the company how to adjust the pricing on the policy where they get a significant pricing discount, and then ONLY pay the out-of-pockets for just the small percentage of employees that file these claims.

The savings are significant and the employees have the same level of benefits. In fact, we can show how to add more benefits into their package funded by the cost savings, so the company still has a net savings in the neighborhood of 35%. Do the math yourself. What would a 35% savings in your benefits premiums translate into actual dollars saved?

So if companies are over paying premiums and are not using these techniques we specialize in, then it's not the government's fault. Yet it’s not simply an issue of shopping insurance carriers more effectively as Obama would have you believe. In fact this is all about the benefits firm you choose to work with.

It's important to note that for us to help your company with this technique, we don't have to look at another carrier's health insurance policy. We can work with your existing carrier and restructure your plan design if we are assigned as your agent of record. You have no out of pocket cost for this, as you just authorize your carrier to work with us in servicing your policy. So if your current agent/broker has not reviewed these ideas with you, shouldn’t you work with one who will? Contact us today to learn how we can help you immediately save significantly on your benefits premiums.

For once in life, it really is this simple.

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Sam’s Club to launch a private health insurance exchange

The warehouse store has built a service that it hopes will appeal to the small business owners that are its core customers.

No need to try finding savings on health insurance at Sam's Club. We provide small business and individuals creative solutions that are up to 50% lower than these going rates. Ask us how!

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Why Big Health Insurance is pouring money into startups

A part of the Affordable Care Act forces insurers to redeploy capital rather than distribute it to shareholders. And that's where things get interesting.

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LOWER YOUR EMPLOYEE BENEFITS MEDICAL PREMIUMS WITH YOUR CURRENT CARRIER UP TO 50%, WITH SAME COVERAGE

Did your employee benefits consultant do this for you?  If not, maybe the question you should be asking yourself is, why are they your agent of record? At Fixed Cost Benefits, we’ll show you how to do this with your current carrier today, so you and your employees can immediately start saving money. No more annual renewal meetings with insurance agents presenting themselves as valued consultants only offering the same carrier with a rate increase! •  Service available with your existing insurance carrier……no need to be        sold and have to buy another policy with another carrier. This is      available right now, today

•   We have over 30 years experience working with the most competitive      carriers with this service. This is a time-tested and fully compliant      service with DOL, ERISA, IRS, and HIPAA •    Flexibility to customize the service to balance your interest in saving       cost vs. enhancing benefit levels. You are in full control to select the       right mix for your company and employees

AETNA, BCBS OF NC, CIGNA/GREAT WEST, HUMANA, IAC, UNICARE/WELLPOINT, UNITED HEALTHCARE, WELLPATH/COVENTRY ARE ALL ELIGIBLE PROVIDERS FOR THIS SERVICE

New Obamacare requirements and rising insurance costs, have created the perfect storm for the ability of this service to immediately provide you and your employees huge savings on your existing policy’s costs.  Call for a free, no obligation consultation at 919-949-9709.

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Welcome To Our Blog

At Fixed Cost Benefits, our passion is helping small businesses find the employee benefits medical solutions to dramatically lower their premium costs and increase their level of benefits.

How can this be done? Well the typical employee benefits advisors don't get creative for their small business clients, and treat them like a, small business. At Fixed Cost Benefits, we take our 30+ years experience and customize approved and proven solutions used all across the country, but only by those lucky enough to have a sophisticated and savvy advisor who knows the carriers to fight for you on better pricing, and then sharing the techniques that only a handful know of, to save tens of thousands annually.

Would you like to use these significant savings for other benefits, or just improve your bottom line, and have an employee benefits independent consultant who adds value and makes your company feel good that you are working with the right people?

Stay tuned for our updates on our latest thoughts to help you stay on the cutting edge and maximize your benefits for your employees and minimize your costs.