31%
pay increase an engaged employee needs before they will seriously consider leaving a job they value
Source: Gallup Workplace Research, 2024
For HR, finance leaders, and owners at employers with 10 to 1,000 employees on a group plan
Your group health insurance costs more every year. Employees feel it in both the monthly premium and the deductible.
What if a different structure could reset the cost lower and give employees better financial protection?
Employers I have worked with have seen savings of $50 to $400 per employee per month, without cutting coverage. Results vary by group. Here is how it works.
Picture your next renewal.
What if your plan reset lower this year, so every renewal after it starts from a smaller number?
What if employees could afford the monthly premium?
What if employees could afford to use the plan?
What if HR had less benefit work on its plate?
Do you want these things?
Your renewal is always going to increase, but with the structure change, in many cases we can lower it this one time.
A real renewal: $16,000 a month for 20 employees on a gold plan.
After the review: $8,000 a month, level funded, with Medical Balance Protection™ on top.
Not the same coverage for less. Better coverage. $4,000 a month back in the employer's budget (about $48,000 a year), and every employee's share of the premium drops by $200 a month, healthy or not.
Every group is different. That is why the review comes first.
- Licensed since 2007
- Independent. Multiple carriers.
- Paid by the carrier, not by you
- Full back-office support through my General Agency
Group Benefits Better™ because I do Group Benefits Differently™
Benefits are not a cost to minimize.
They are the infrastructure that keeps your best people from doing the math and leaving.
The person who reviews your coverage is the same person who restructures it, and answers when you call.
When to call
The best time to review your plan is 90 to 120 days before renewal, while there is still time to take it to market and change something. Inside that window is still worth a call; I will tell you what can move this year and what waits until next. Call sooner if:
- You have lost a candidate or a good employee over benefits, and the raise pool is already gone.
- Your last renewal was double digits and nobody could explain why.
- Employees are dropping coverage or skipping care because of the deductible.
- Your people do not understand what they have, so good benefits go unused and the ER gets used like a doctor's office.
- Your broker shows up once a year with a spreadsheet, and the other 11 months are on you.
- Health, dental, vision, wellness, and voluntary benefits each come from a different rep, and when something breaks, nobody owns it.
- A billing error has bounced between the carrier and the employee, and it will not die.
When leadership asks about the renewal
When the renewal comes in higher, you are the one standing in front of leadership.
After our review, you are not walking in empty-handed. You can explain how the plan is different from last year, what it costs per employee per month, and the added financial protection for employees that came out of restructuring.
You are not guessing. You are showing what you did about it.
Good planning shows up quietly, season after season.
Did you know?
2.8%
increase in retention from as little as $1 more per hour in take-home pay
Source: Harvard University, 2023
53%
of Americans live paycheck to paycheck, regardless of income
Source: LendEDU
Read the post
The four parts
Four parts. One plan. One person to call with questions.
Group Health Insurance
Fully insured plans pool your group with everyone else; healthy teams subsidize higher-risk groups whether they realize it or not. Level funded plans price your group on your own claims history, with stop-loss protection and a possible year-end refund if your staff stays healthy. Same coverage. Different math.
Learn moreWellness Plan
Shifts preventive and office visit expense off the health plan, which gives your renewal less to price against. Lowers taxable income for employees through Section 125. Most generic medications at $0 or low copay.
Learn moreAgentDavidCares.com does not provide tax advice. Tax savings vary by individual. Please consult your accountant or tax advisor.
Medical Balance Protection (Gap)
Pays the remaining medical balance, in whole or in part, directly to the provider. Benefit amount matches your plan's maximum out of pocket. Reduces financial stress on employees without changing your health plan.
Learn moreVoluntary Benefits
Dental and vision. Life insurance, even with health issues. Disability on or off the job. Accident. Cancer, heart attack, stroke. Chosen by the employee, paid to the employee, at no additional cost to you.
Learn moreI work with employers whose plan is already in place, the renewal is coming, the coverage is not landing, or the network no longer fits your people. The review starts with what you have.
The review pays off most between 100 and 300 employees. That is where level funding and the four parts do their best work.
A real result
A real result, not a typical one
This was a client's own renewal notice, a switch from a traditional fully insured plan to a level-funded plan, showing savings up to 30% on a matched, gold-to-gold plan comparison.
Another real result, 20 employees
In 2019, a 20-employee employer was paying $16,000 a month for a traditional fully insured gold plan. The new structure cut the total monthly cost in half while improving how the employees were protected.
The delivery room, two weeks in
Fall 2021. A gym owner in Tennessee moved his pregnant wife from her local school district plan onto his new level-funded coverage with Medical Balance Protection™. Two weeks later, the plan covered the delivery room bill.
The employer who never had a review
They changed group plans mid-year, employers can do that, and when the savings and the coverage are both better, I recommend it. The change was probably right. What was missing was the protection: Medical Balance Protection™ did not exist yet, so when John's family hit their out-of-pocket three times in eight months, there was nothing to catch it.
Today the review considers both halves: the employer's position and the employee's. The change, and the protection behind it.
Less on HR's plate.
Open enrollment should not mean paper forms, email chains, and the same questions every year. Without support, HR spends months on prep, fields those questions one by one, and then spends weeks after enrollment correcting mistakes. When an employee cannot read a bill, gets a claim denied, or walks in with a $4,000 balance they cannot pay, they call me, not you. I handle communication, live Q&A, enrollment guidance, and the billing questions that follow, so that work moves off HR's desk.
One advisor. Full back-office support.
Group Benefits Better™ because I do Group Benefits Differently™.
Insurance agents and group benefits advisors are not the same job. An agent places a policy, usually medical, dental, and vision, and tends to show up when renewal season comes around. An advisor works year-round: the plan is built around your group, and there is someone to call when something goes wrong between renewals.
The other difference is access. A captive agent represents one carrier, or a short list of them. Independent market access means the recommendation is built around your group instead of one carrier's shelf.
HR directors ask me three things. What happens if you get sick? Who runs open enrollment for 200 people across three shifts? How does one person get any leverage with a billion-dollar carrier? Fair questions.
Through my General Agency I have carrier relationships, underwriting support, claims assistance, enrollment technology, and back-office staff behind every recommendation, without passing that overhead to you. What you do not get is the handoff. At a large agency your account gets pitched by a senior person and serviced by a junior one. Here, the person who builds your strategy is the person who runs your renewal and answers the phone. Same premium. Better service. No extra cost.
After the sale, you have one number to call: mine. Behind that number sits the back office that comes with it, my General Agency, and an enrollment team that runs enrollment at no cost to you. Enrollment, compliance questions, billing errors with the carrier: that work belongs to my side, not your HR desk.
Questions employers ask before they call
What the call is
Bring your renewal letter. Everything else, we cover on the call.
The first call is fact-finding: what you have, what it costs, where you are exposed. The pricing work happens between our calls, the second conversation is where options land. Nothing is owed in between.
Your renewal is coming regardless. The question is whether you review it first.
Book a free renewal review