Several decades ago, employers became entangled in the provision of healthcare by offering to pay for health insurance and benefits to their employees as an incentive for employee retention. Why a business would want to delve into a market and benefit provision that they know nothing about is a different discussion but now US employers provide 88% of non-governmental health insurance. Over the years, the cost for this benefit has been split between employers, usually paying about 80% of the premium for individuals and 70% for family plans, and the employee.

 

Increasing Cost Of Healthcare

Besides saddling themselves with an ever increasing cost of healthcare, employers have also pigeonholed their employees into a healthcare structure that is taking up more and more of their wages. In fact, as of 2018, healthcare benefit is the largest cost to an employer after wages, accounting for 8.7% of the total cost per employee.

Healthcare continues to be a challenge and reported as the number one concern by employees. Since employees are any business’ more precious asset, it is imperative for employers to address this concern in a meaningful way.

In the current environment, employers are providing a benefit that is hidden behind a wall of every rising premiums as an up-front cost, and then episodic pitfalls of copays and deductibles. It makes sense for the employers to be more creative in addressing the number one concern of their most important asset...after all doing the same thing repeatedly and expecting a different result is the ultimate form of foolishness.

 

Health Sharing And Its Rise

The change in mindset must start with understanding the reality of costs so a proper understanding of benefit/cost ratio can be realized. With the rise of Health Sharing th emarket is ripe with multiple options.

When an employer realizes that the cost of providing routine office visits, labs and medications for a 50-year old employee is about 40-50% less than insurance, it becomes much clearer that the employer can provide better usable health monies and save over 50% on healthcare costs which can be translated into higher wages for the employees and higher profits for the business.

We hope that above examples show how employers can continue to address the number one concern of their employees and yet control costs of their healthcare related expenses by stitching together offerings that take advantage of the discounts and market forces for cheap yet high quality free-market healthcare, and cheaper health insurance or healthshare plans to cover rare but high expense events like hospitalizations. Businesses succeed by being innovative--time to do the same to your healthcare benefits offerings as well!