How Your Health Insurance Buying Style Affects Your Renewal
As the fourth quarter nears, many of you are entering the period when your health insurance renews.
“That means calls and emails from health insurance brokers requesting an updated census, benefit summaries, and a copy of the most recent renewal to go ‘work their magic’ and quote your benefits,” says Bob Gearhart Jr., with the DCW Group.
“Here’s the dirty little secret about quoting health insurance: If your current broker, three other brokers and your HR manager all go to market with the same data, they will all receive the same quotes,” he says.
In this installment of The New Benefits Blueprint, Gearhart talks about why you should interview brokers outside of your health insurance renewal.
“This type of buying style shifts the conversation away from the one area that makes all brokers the same (the price of the commodity) and squarely to strategy,” says Gearhart.
Gearhart Jr. was named Rising Star in Advising by Employee Benefit Advisers magazine, a finalist for Broker of the Year by BenefitsPRO magazine, and has been awarded multiple awards by the Association for Insurance Leadership. He is a nationally recognized speaker on health care and employee benefits frequently appearing on radio, television, and in print to provide expert knowledge concerning the ever-changing landscape surrounding health care in America.
Gearhart Jr. also co-authored the Amazon best selling book “Breaking Through the Status Quo: How Companies Are Changing the Benefits Game to Help Their Employees and Boost Their Bottom Line.” In the book, Gearhart Jr. explains the power of data analytics to inform and guide decisions that can lower health-care costs in group health plans.
In his current role at DCW Group, he and his team relentlessly focus on delivering measurable, repeatable, and predictable reductions in health-care costs for their employer clients while simultaneously improving the benefits for their employees.
DCW Group is an employee benefits and business consulting firm with a goal of making its clients more profitable and productive at their core business, by improving the way they procure health care.
DCW accomplishes this by implementing strategies that create measurable, repeatable and predictable reductions in health-care costs for their employer clients while simultaneously improving the benefits for their employees. Understanding the business models of stakeholders within the health-care supply chain and employee benefits allows DCW Group to eliminate waste, provide transparency and return stakeholder profits to their clients.
Have employee benefits questions? Email Bob Gearhart Jr. at BobJr@dcwgrp.com.
Copyright 2024 The Business Journal, Youngstown, Ohio.
