Typically premiums are determined based upon the group experience. The cost goes up the more the insurance is used. Some people never use it beyond getting their annual physical. However, if your group has catestrophic claims or people that use the Er as a doctors' office, high instance of chronic disease and complications attached to that requiring surgerie or long hospital stays, stuff like that then the premium goes up.
Are they offering a fully insurance plan or is it a high deductible self insuraned plan?
Do you know for sure they aren't picking up a good amount? I'm only asking because i hear this at work all the time when in fact, we pick up at a minimum 84% of th premiums for our employees. They have a real eye opener when they leave the company and find out just how much it costs when they get the COBRA bill.
At least you'll know for sure since they're required to add how much you pay and how much the company pays on your W-2 this year.
I sign off on a monthly invoice that is over $500,000 for just our Illinois location. Double that with our Pennsylvania location and we're talking that the company pays over $12,000,000 per year just for healthcare for our employees. As more of the healthcare reform gets implemented, companies are faced with some decisions to make regarding how to contain those multi-million dollar costs. Part it is to pass some of the increase to the employees, or switch to a consumer driven high deductible HRA or HRS plan which encourages to people to get healthy as it saves a lot of money as well as lives or there are some companies out there considering dropping coverage altogether and paying the penalty because it's cheaper to do so and will save millions of dollars in the operating budget.
Anyway...I'm not trying to defend insurance companies or even your company. I just wanted to throw out some food for thought so to speak. There is a LOT we can all do to contain costs but we don't and it jacks up the premiums. Someone needs to apy for it.
it's a double edged sword. If you have an unhealthy workforce coupled with a company that can't or won't meet the bulk of the premium then yeah, you get into this situation and it totally sucks.
