Broker blog

Have you noticed the amount of new services in the benefits industry? To name a few: identity theft protection, telehealth, doctors online, advocacy, pet care insurance, savings networks, legal plans, cancer/critical illness/accident insurances, international medical and the list goes on.

While these can bring added complication to a sales or planning conversation, there’s a lot of opportunity to not only help your client, but also your paycheck.

The need for telehealth is obvious these days. However, with more and more of the benefits budget being used up by the medical plan, many turn to voluntary offerings. A voluntary strategy allows the employee to purchase services they feel suit them best, and this is usually a good approach.

Benjamin Franklin said, “When you’re finished changing, you’re finished.” Almost 250 years later, Ben’s quote is truer than ever. What I mean is, your willingness and ability to keep changing is your market advantage. As I keep a close eye on the horizon for hints at where employee benefit trends are headed, I’ve been drawn to two recent pieces:

Can we just admit it? Healthcare and insurance are confusing! I was a broker for over three years, and I still couldn’t parse a medical bill to save my life. As an Employee Benefits Consultant, no one knows your groups better than you. But, if an advocacy program can help take some of the load off your desk by answering many of those employee questions during fourth quarter, wouldn’t that be nice for your groups' HR teams, employees AND you?

What would we do without Google? It's the world’s greatest encyclopedia. There's nothing you can’t find with a simple Google search.  

Have you sold a telehealth case and experienced the two user extremes? These are typical responses when an employee first hears of telehealth and how it works… 

Insurance carriers know it. If you build self-funded plans, you know it. There are ways to reduce plan costs while ‘hiding’ the reduced benefits. One of the rapidly growing methods is to shrink the provider network, which impacts patients' access to healthcare.

Star Wars Episode VII launched last year, so we can confidently state that we are in ‘the future.’ Despite this, the healthcare industry tends to lag behind. For instance, we still can’t replace arms (Luke Skywalker) or restore burned, limbless bodies to (arguably) perfect working condition (Anakin Skywalker/Darth Vader).