October 2010 - InsureYourCompany

Like it or not, healthcare reform has passed and the first portion of the bill, the patient protection portion is implemented.

New group health insurance plans that are started after September 23^rd of this year will have a whole set of new protections that will expand coverage, but unfortunately may increase your rates. The costs of the added protections have to come from somewhere.

The second portion of the bill, the affordability portion is set to go in to effect in 2014. So what can your business do now with the outlandish increases and high rates that you are facing?

Two words. Shop now.

There are insurers out there that offer alternatives to traditional coverage and may be able to offer you immediate relief in the way of lower premiums. These insurers may not be right for every company out there, but it is worth looking in to. Some of these insurers are also exempt from the added costs of state regulation.

You have a choice right now. You can either take your increases and high premium costs and hope that in 2014 you will see relief, or you can take a hard look at your current group health insurance plan and come up with a strategy to contain costs.

I recommend that you develop a strategy now with an insurance broker who specializes in health insurance.

If your broker just hands you a couple of spreadsheets, you owe yourself, your company, and your employees the appropriate due diligence that a broker from CG Benefits Group and Technology Insurance Associates can provide. The plan that your company has, may not be the best option for you and the traditional marketplace may not be best either. Either way, you need to have your benefits reviewed.

Here’s what you need to do now:

Gather your employee census information to get ready to submit to a broker
Get copies of current plan benefit summary and rates
Prepare to take a serious look at your contributions as an employer and how much your employees contribute
Contact us now and a licensed insurance broker who specializes in health insurance will contact you to start getting quotes from all available carriers. You will discuss your strategy, goals, and needs with the broker to assist him or her in getting a proposal that meets all of your company’s requirements.

So you have applied for new group health insurance for your company, or you are an employee at a company that is moving to a new health insurance carrier, one thing that you want to know is when do I receive my medical ID cards?

After your company has submitted the application to the insurance company, your application goes into underwriting. Underwriting is the process of reviewing your company’s application and can take a couple of days or weeks depending on the complexity of your new insurance and the amount of submissions that the insurance carrier has received.

Generally speaking, after your group’s insurance is approved, the employees’ information is loaded into the insurance carrier’s computer system in about 3-4 business days. After the members and their dependents are setup in the health insurance carrier’s system, the medical ID cards are shipped to the employees’ home. You can expect to receive the medical ID cards within 5-10 business days after the employees’ information is setup.

Almost all health insurance carriers send the medical ID cards to the employees’ home, but there are exceptions where the insurance carrier will send the medical ID cards to the broker’s office or directly to the employer. If the medical ID cards are not sent directly to the employees’ home, then your broker will notify you of this.

Time to receive the medical ID cards can vary, but the time frame above is generally what happens based on our experience at Technology Insurance Associates.

If you have not received your medical ID cards in a timely manner, it is best to contact your broker and let him or her know so the health insurance carrier can be contacted to check to see where the medical ID cards are.