Group Health Plans in the Bay Area, specifically in San Jose, Santa Clara and up the peninsula can be expensive. Very expensive. The landscape has definitely changed just this year in 2014. The plans are much more comprehensive, but all of that costs money. The rating system is changed too, so they used to rate people based off their age in brackets of 10 years, 20’s, 30’s, 40’s, etc. Now it is incremental to each year of your life, age 21 your price is $XX, at age 22 your price is $XXX, and so on. Another “gotcha” is that when you have adult children over the age of 18, they will cover them until age 26, but they are rated as adults after 18. The insurance companies are also rating the first 3 children under 18 in the family when you have the parents and children being insured. It used to be one child or 10, you would pay the same price.
Group Health Plan premiums have skyrocketed for some employees
The premium calculations have changed in 2014 too. Before this year, if you had two parents and some children, you had a family plan and the price was the same, whether you had one child or 10 children. Now in 2014, you are charged for the first 3 children under the age of 18. Just this change alone has increased some employees premiums on their Group Health Plan or Group Health Insurance dramatically. In my case, I have a Kaiser family plan for myself, my wife and 3 children. The premium last year was $1150 a month. This year it is going to almost $1800 a month….and for a plan that is not as good. Thanks ObamaCare. Since the Group Health Plans have changed so much, its hard to make an apples to apples comparison from last year’s plan to this year’s plan. That’s why you need a Group Health Plan expert or a broker that specializes in Group Health Insurance. The price an employer pays is the same, no matter who your broker is, or even if you choose not to have a broker. The pricing is set by the State of CA and cannot be negotiated.
Group Health Plan pricing cannot be negotiated, but having a Health Insurance Specialist is paramount
Since the pricing is set by the State, the only way to have any strategy with your Group Health Plan or Group Health Insurance is to have an expert show you some strategies that some companies find to be useful and cost saving. There is not enough room in this blog to go into detail, but there are ways to mitigate much of the cost of the Group Health Insurance costs with the usage of other insurance products and structuring it in a way to not only be beneficial to the employee but the employer too. Brauer Insurance is one of the recognized experts in Health Reform and the Affordable Care Act of 2010. Email or call me and I can give you more details. I promise not to stalk you for business, we have almost more than we can handle now.