Health Insurance (CONT’D FROM PAGE 1)
workers’ shoulders. “Benefits are a big piece of total com- pensation,” explained Walter Winter, Senior VP of Employ- ee Benefits for Woodruff Sawyer, an independent insur- ance broker. “The employer who just keeps cost shifting is going to end up with a workplace less and less attractive to employees and job candidates. Retention and recruit- ment may suffer.” Too, there’s a growing realization that employee par- ticipation just kicks the health insurance can down the road. “The old cost-shifting thing is played out,” said Mike Barton, Chief Growth Officer, Employee Benefits, at World Insurance, a broker.
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“You can increase deductibles and co-pays, and take more out of the paychecks, but that doesn’t reduce the
overall spend.” New Initiatives
Clearly, the business world needs some fresh paths through the health insurance wilderness. Many observers expect Washington to provide them. “The first Trump ad- ministration relaxed some of the regulations and tried to increase access to healthcare through market competition and price transparency,” said Steve Kelly, partner at AZ Health Insurance Brokers. He expects similar innovation in the months ahead. Perhaps the most likely initiative to come out of Wash- ington will be a further expansion of a fairly new insurance vehicle called the Individual Coverage Health Reimburse- ment Arrangement (ICHRA, pronounced “ICK-ra”). Intro- duced in 2020 by the first Trump administration, these arrangements allow employers of any size to reimburse participants for the premiums they pay for a health insur- ance plan of their choice. Employer reimbursements are tax deductible, and employees receive them tax-free. “An ICHRA is like a 401k plan for healthcare,” said Jack Hooper, CEO and Co-Founder of Take Command Health, a provider of health reimbursement arrangements (HRAs). “Each employee can put money towards a high-quality ACA plan that has their doctors and prescriptions covered. It’s a win-win where employees are going to enjoy more
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February 10, 2025
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