Running your own medical practice is challenging these days. Offering insurance benefits to your employees is just one part of the puzzle.
What makes it even more difficult is the fact that health-insurance premiums have been rising steadily for the past several years. Over the past decade, insurance premiums in Texas rose by 91.6 percent.1
While you can’t control many of the factors that determine your premiums, there are things you can do to lower your medical-insurance plan costs. These include:
Get a plan with a higher deductible
Offering a medical plan with a low, $500 deductible is becoming a thing of the past. Now it’s more common for small medical practices to offer plans with deductibles of $1,000 – $3,000, which lower the premium.
Ask your employees to pitch in
While it used to be commonplace for employers to pay 100 percent of employees’ premiums, most companies now ask employees to pitch in and pay some portion of the premium, even if it’s just 10 or 20 percent. Keep in mind that employers must pay at least 50 percent of the premium in order to qualify for tax benefits.
Choose “managed care” plans
Preferred provider organizations (PPOs) and health maintenance organizations (HMOs), also called “managed care” plans, contract directly with physicians, hospitals, and providers to offer services at pre-negotiated rates, and therefore have lower premiums.
Voluntary benefits
Voluntary benefits are insurance plans you can offer your employees through your group, but the employees pay 100 percent of the premium. Many practices offer a “core” insurance benefits package, such as medical insurance, and then offer other plans on a voluntary basis, including:
- Dental
- Life
- Vision
- Short-term disability
- Long-term disability
- Long-term care
Discounts
Many insurance carriers are now offering medical-insurance plan discounts if you add a dental- or life-insurance policy to your plan.
To find out more about how you can lower your group medical-insurance premiums, contact a TMAIT Advisor via email at contact@tmait.org, or call 1.800.880.8181.
For helpful tips on starting and managing a medical practice, read “Opening a practice? What you need to know about insurance.”
1. Families USA, Costly Coverage: Premiums Outpace Paychecks in Texas, September 2009, http://familiesusa2.org/assets/pdfs/costly-coverage/texas.pdf. Accessed July 15, 2011.