Apta Healthcare Blog

Per the Kaiser Family Foundation, average annual premiums for employer-sponsored family health coverage reached $19,616 this year, up an additional 5% from last year. 

Employees paid an average $5,714 out of pocket in premiums alone. This outrageous cost for insurance, is hurting both employees and employer groups.

Unfortunately, for most organizations, these costs are projected to grow exponentially, with no end in sight.

Why are healthcare costs rising so quickly? Factors such as being overcharged by providers, hidden fees, exploitive processes, and many more, prey on the checkbooks of uninformed individuals and have driven up the bottom line of employer benefit packages.

 It’s no secret that the health insurance model is broken. Once well-intentioned, health insurance service has degraded into a fragmented, confusing labyrinth of bureaucracy. Recent surveys suggest that only 4% of Americans understand health insurance jargon which results in wasteful spending and frustrated members.

 These frustrations have most employer groups shouting, “Enough is enough!” Mid-market employers (defined as organizations with under 2,000 employees) are tired of being forced to offer mediocre benefits at an outlandish cost.

 Luckily, there is an alternative: a high performance, self-funded benefit program that focuses on employee engagement and navigation.

Platinum Patients are outliers that make up a mere 5 percent of the population, but spend the same amount on healthcare as the remaining 95 percent combined. This means, if there was a cake offered to 100 people, 5 people would eat as much cake as 95 people.

Okay, so Platinum Patients must be the sickest 5 percent of the population and require a significant amount of care, right? Well, not necessarily.

Any number of unforeseeable employee health crises can have a major effect on company healthcare costs: an office-wide flu outbreak, seasonal illnesses, even bad guacamole in the break room can all lead to high healthcare claims costs.

Annual premiums for employer-sponsored family health coverage rose to $18,764 in 2017 — employees paid an average $5,714 out of pocket in premiums alone. Seems like a pretty outrageous cost for the mere security of everyday livelihood, doesn’t it? Well, guess what? The cost for employers and employees alike is projected to keep growing, with no end in sight.

Health insurance has lost its way. As a result of bureaucracy and corporate greed, the healthcare system is broken, and is costing employers and employees alike.

Company health insurance should give employees peace of mind — assurance that care is available whenever needed. It should provide companies a way to keep employees healthy and show that every individual’s best interest is a priority. In these areas and more, full-coverage health insurance falls short.

The uncertainty surrounding the future of healthcare in the United States has put many Americans on edge. The proposal to repeal the Affordable Care Act (ACA) and replace it with the Republican-sponsored American Health Care Act (or Better Care Reconciliation Act) is making people feel unsure, and possibly leaving many Americans uninsured.

With the rise in healthcare consumerism, patients demand access to the highest level of care and the latest technology. Care coordination and navigation is central to this trend, and with it the use of convenient apps to deliver top quality care in a way that’s both easy and comfortable for patients.

The provision of healthcare insurance is commonly recognized as the primary benefit an employer can offer their staff. Even so, many employers only begrudgingly offer the benefit and many employees treat healthcare plan selection as a chore.

If you were renting a house, would you invest $30,000 in a kitchen renovation? Of course not. The investment would only benefit the owner who still has complete control over the future of the home. In the world of insurance, the fully insured model is just pouring money into a rental.