Met with the health insurance agent the other day. Our business premiums went up 33% over last year. Of that, all of 5% was due to the increase in our RAF (“Risk Adjustment Factor”) which is unusually high for a company our size, but hey, I’d have jumped for joy at a 5% increase. The remaining 28% was Kaiser Permanente raising rates across the board. Larger businesses than ours got hit with even higher premium increases.
I’ve carefully kept each of the various corporations we oversee at the magic fewer-than-50-employees number, primarily to avoid several California statutes that come into play at that level. It also exempts one from much of ObamaCare, so theoretically we could just not offer health care to our employees and be on our merry way. But the boss doesn’t want to do that; he doesn’t ever want an employee’s work suffering due to stress about health issues, so we’re wrestling with what to do.
On another note, our daughter is without dental insurance at the moment and a couple years too old to be on our plan, so I accompanied her to our dentist this morning to pay or her to get an x-ray and cleaning. Cost for that was $201.00 cash out the door. Seemed a fair price to me.
I’ve been paying cash for a while at the dentist. You should be getting at least a few percent off just for the fact that you are not paying by credit card. I’m getting 15% off the prices given to my old insurance if I pay in cash and pay in full at the time of visit.
When negotiating the discount, point out that there is no credit card surcharge, no forms or other paperwork to fill and file, and no waiting for reimbursement from the insurance company.
CA puts massive mandates on health insurance carriers. Having worked for an insurance company I can tell you that it makes for unbelievable costs in lawyers, clerks, and programmers to comply with them – as well as the actual costs of covering everything under the sun.
That’s why most insurance companies got out of health coverage and your firm probably only has 3 or 4 choices.