If your Dallas company's open enrollment period for your Texas group health insurance plan is at the end of the year, you will soon be facing tough economic decisions.  Your Dallas group health insurance broker will soon be delivering the bad news to you:  Your rates will likely be somewhere between nine to fifteen percent higher next year for the same level of coverage. 

If you are have a Texas small group health insurance plan (with fifty or less employees), by law, Texas group health insurance carriers cannot raise your premiums by more than fifteen percent.  If your company has more than fifty employees in your Texas group health insurance plan, there is no limit to the potential increase.

The most obvious budget options are for you to reduce the coverage offered to employees by raising deductibles and reducing benefits, hold employees accountable for a greater portion of their group health insurance premium, charge more for your company's products or services to recoup the cost increases, or perhaps budget to sell more of your company's products and services, or show a lower profit.

Perhaps to deflect part of the criticism, some group health insurance brokers in Dallas Texas may also recommend changing insurance carriers.  Be cautious if your broker recommends to you that you change group health insurance carriers in Texas because of rate differences alone.

Our experience is that this is a very competitive market, and group health insurance rates in Dallas usually do not vary much from one company to another for comparable coverage, so unless your company or employees have have received poor service, a rate increase is usually not a good reason alone to change group health insuarace companies.  

Group health insurance carrier changes can cause frustration and disruption among employees and dependents who must at times change their doctors to ones that accept the plan's PPO, and any rate difference between companies is usually short lived.

So what can a budget-challenged company administrator to do to reduce the impact of inflationary Dallas group health insurance rates?

First, consider asking your employees.  Employee input into  budget choices at this time of year can be an empowering and a motivating force.  Employees are smart, they read the newspaper and watch television and they know that providing group health insurance for employees is expensive.  Let them know how much the rates will increase for the next year, both overall to the company, and per employee.  Get their input on some of the options that your company has to cover the cost increase.

Second, ask your Dallas group health insurance broker for recommendations.  Any broker can deliver the bad news, and show comparison rates from other Texas group health insurance companies.  A smart broker can show you group health care insurance solutions that you can implement without changing group health insurance companies.  Often, a smart broker can recommend strategies that allow an employer to provide similar or possibly even better benefits to employees at a reduced rate.

Keep in mind that a broker earns a commission on the premiums you pay, and a broker who has put their own self-interest over your company's best interests may not want to recommend strategies that could reduce your group health insurance premiums, as that reduces their income.

Some possible strategies for you is first to consider implementing a Texas consumer driven health plan as an option for employees.  These plans are very inexpensive because they have high deductibles and many plans also do not have Rx or doctor visit copay benefits until the employee meets their high deductible.  The premium that the employer and employee pay for coverage in one of these plans is much lower than a traditional plan. 

Since most employees (over two thirds) never meet their deductible, a consumer driven health plan can be a good option for healthy employees who rarely go to the doctor.  An employee with one of these plans can then set up a health savings account (HSA) that works like an IRA to save money tax-free for future health dental and vision care expenses.  The employee or the employer can choose to make periodic contributions into the HSA so that the cmployee has funds available to meet out of pocket expenses from the occasional doctor visit.

Another option for your company may be to couple a high deductible health plan with a health reimbursement arrangement, or HRA for employees.  Since the deductible is high, the premiums are low.  You set up the HRA to reimburse employees for eligible medical expenses after they pay for a set amount of expenses, say $1,000 to $1,500.  The group health insurance plan then pays after the higher deductible is finally met.  But unlike HSA plans above, the health insurance plan can have Rx and doctor visit copay benefits before the deductible is met.

Both the HRA and the HSA are great devices to lower insurance premiums, and give employees incentives to be careful about their own health and spending the health care benefits wisely.  And because over time the insurance carrier pays fewer claims, future inflationary rate increases will be less.

Another strategy in controlling the cost of health insurance for your employees is to give them the tools and the incentives to improve their own health. 

Tobacco, poor nutrition and sedentary lifestyles among employees leads to chronic, debilitating, and expensive diseases such as diabetes, cancer, heart attack and stroke to name a few.  Encouraging and rewarding employees to maintain healthier lifestyles can have a direct impact on the cost of your company's group health insurance rates in Texas and can improve employee productivity by lowering absenteeism.

Ultimately, the only way for a company to control their group health insurance costs is to improve the health of their employees. A smart broker can show you how you can implement a corporate wellness plan for free that can be paid for out of savings from implementation of a consumer driven health plan. 

So if your Dallas group health insurance broker has never recommended or discussed in detail solutions that your company can use to help control group health insurance rates, and if your broker has recommended changing insurance carriers for the sake of a minor insurance rate difference, then you should discuss the above suggestions with your broker and get their input.  If the suggestions are rejected out of hand, then perhaps it is time to put your interestes ahead of your broker's.

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If you would like a no-obligation consultation for your company's dalllas employee benefits plan, including Texas group health insurance quotes, contact Mike Chapman at GroupBenefitsAdvisors.com, 214-764-6315 or (888) 398-6246.