Employers across the country are discovering ways to provide the highest quality healthcare for their employees at the lowest price. This seems almost impossible, given the current state of healthcare in America. But things are starting to change. Recently, President Trump issued a new rule that could cut American health care prices in half. This rule requires health care providers to publish the secret negotiated rates they offer insurers through PPO networks and other arrangements. As millions of patients have found out the hard way, hidden health care prices can contribute to significant surprise medical bills, financial hardship and personal bankruptcies. Unknown costs make going to the hospital a terrifying experience because patients don’t know what they will be charged until after they get their bills weeks later in the mail. By understanding the actual prices for treatment, patients can find the best quality care for the lowest price.
They have confidence that the treatment or procedure they need won’t result in financial ruin. BevCap Management in McKinney, Texas runs two captive health insurance groups – a homogenous group for the beverage industry and a heterogeneous group for general market businesses over 75 employees. This small but rapidly growing movement of businesses has traded the traditional insurance model for a program that not only saves the company money but provides its employees with substantially better benefits. Jason Dixon, partner at BevCap Management, says “It’s all about making healthcare dollars stretch longer – it is cutting out the waste in the system.” BevCap Health Captive member Fisher59, which has 275 employees, had faced double-digit health care cost increases for years. HR Director Kelli Keen notes, “Small businesses like ours have been among the biggest victims of rising health care costs, which now exceed $20,500 per employee nationally — a 54% increase since 2009. Surveys of small businesses consistently find that health care costs are the biggest operational challenge year after year.
I can speak from personal experience about the cost-cutting effect of transparent prices as an early adopter. Fisher59 has incentivized our employees to forgo traditional pricing providers and insurers in favor of contracting directly with health centers that publish clear prices such as the Texas Free Market Surgery center and the Surgery Center of Oklahoma. This move has reduced my company’s health care costs by roughly 50% over the past few years. We can look at four procedures alone that saved the company over $100,000. For instance, one employee received a knee replacement at a preferred surgery center for $20,567 yet was quoted $70,791 from a local hospital for the same procedure. Another employee had an eye surgery for $11,836 that would have cost $25,000 at the hospital.” David Bristol with Employee Staffing Solutions, a BevCap Cayman member, says “After surveying our employees and conducting market analysis, we determined that a major source of inflated healthcare costs was our traditional insurer. Its hidden pricing mechanisms and contract arrangements with hospital provider networks were confusing, limited, and very expensive. (We started) direct contracting with primary and surgical care centers whose prices are clear.
We offer our employees free access to telemedicine and onsite primary care access with no copays, deductibles, or paperwork. For surgeries, we provide employees a share of the savings we enjoy through cash bonuses. Even without insurance picking up part of the tab, the costs these health centers charge are orders of magnitude less than those from traditional providers. We’ve been able to cut our health care costs by nearly 50 percent over the past several years from about $800 a month per employee to roughly $450. Because our employees pay a small portion of their coverage costs, they’ve seen their costs fall by nearly half as well. Perhaps the best part — for both the business and our employees — is no more surprise bills. We know exactly what we are paying before care is provided.
This allows us to budget our health care costs more easily and gives our employees peace of mind.” Joe LaMantia III is general partner of L&F Distributors, a beverage distributor in Texas with 1,100 employees. Since joining BevCap health captive, L&F’s healthcare costs have fallen to around $5,000 per year per employee, even while providing no-cost surgeries for employees, complete with transportation, limousine service, and meals. “I can’t tell you how many times someone has stopped me and thanked me for having this type of healthcare program,” LaMantia says.
For more information, please contact: Jeff Marchino Jeff@bevcapmanagement.com, 469.424.3419.
