Day: December 31, 2008

The top achievement of RiskMangers.us in 2008 was to peel away the onion layers of the PPO world to expose the truth behind PPO discounts. It has been an interesting mission indeed. We met with hospital administrators, PPO network officials, PHO groups, all of the BUCA’s to learn as much as we could about the mysterious world of hospital and physcian pricing. One of the BUCA’s told us that we would never, ever get our hands on one of their hospital contracts. They were wrong. And what a story their hospital contract told us!

One interesting assignment in 2008 was a newly acquired client in North Texas, a political subdivision, who for the past ten years were sending their employees to one of the two hospitals in the area. Hospital “A” was the “better” hospital because it was in-network, while Hospital “B” was out-of-network. What we found was that the charges at Hospital “A” through the PPO was three to four times higher than the charges at the non-network hospital ten minutes away. So, in essence, employees and their families were steered to a higher cost facility and thereby increasing the Plan’s cost by over $1 million a year for this small group of about 350 employee lives.

There are numerous other stories regarding our quest for truth about PPO’s that are fascinating but for the purposes of this post, would be quite lengthy.

As a result of our quest for truth, in 2008 we moved several of our more progressive clients from the PPO world into the darkness of the unknown – back to the 1970’s when PPO’s were not yet invented. We had the audacity of recommending that our clients may save more by getting away from the PPO world and dealing direct with the provider community – results so far have been good.

What is interesting is all the players watching our intentions play out jumped on the “Your gonna be balance billed and boy are the employees going to be upset” bandwagon. Through a strategic partnership, we solved the problem of balance billing once and for all.

We have also learned that you can partner with a PPO on a client specific basis to achieve similar results. We found this to be particularly true in working the El Paso market.

We are looking forward to 2009 with the many changes sure to come.

Two years ago we assisted a 3,500 life restuarant chain in designing a self-funded mini-med program for their hourly employees. The plan offers a $20 physician co-pay, a prescription drug card (not a discount card), 80% coverage up to an annual calendar year maximum of $2,500 per insured. Plan benefit payments use 2007 RBRVS as a benchmark. Plan participatants pay $50 per month while the employer contributes an additional $50 per month per participant. Paid claim loss ratio has been consistantly below 40%.

We have two other accounts on a similar program. One is a long haul trucking firm and the other is a political subdivision located in Texas. The trucking firm has an annual plan limit of $25,000, while the political subdivision has no annual plan limit. Both plans have funding levels of approximately $100 pepm which has proven to be adequate to cover the expense of the plan.

This should give the reader some idea of what a mini-med plan should cost in view of the benefits offered. There are numerous fully-insured mini-med plans in the market  for those employers not comfortable with assuming any risk.  The best fully-insured mini-med plan we have seen has no deductibles, no co-pays and simply pays 100% of Medicare allowable up to $25,000 per calendar year – all for about $128 per employee per month. And, if you realize that less than 4% of any insured group have claims in excess of $25,000, this may be a very good option for the majority of the participants in the plan.  A premium of $128 versus $500 we have seen for a conventional plan, could be affordable for many employers now struggling with the high cost of group health insurance.