Trilliant Health’s Post

Interesting perspective and thank you for posting this! Extremely important that this thought process is spread around. Creating equitable health insurance solutions that align with employees' ability to pay is a complex challenge. Currently, the ACA's sliding scale of tax credits is one of the closest models, but as far as I know this doesn't really exist within employer-sponsored plans, which typically lack salary-based pricing. Employers often resort to offering different plans or contribution rates by employee class, but this approach can lead to inequity, as lower-cost plans often come with reduced benefits and higher out-of-pocket costs during utilization. Using supplemental products, such as gap coverage or HSAs, to balance benefits between lower and higher-priced plans is an approach I have used in the past. While this might require some extra navigation by the employee (and a savvy broker, willing to do the leg work), it allows their overall healthcare costs to be more in line with their ability to pay, potentially matching out-of-pocket exposure to a reasonable percentage of their income, like the ACA’s sub-9% benchmark.

Kudos to Jeff Levin-Scherz for his analytically sound piece on the deleterious impact of traditional approaches to employer sponsored health insurance on worker affordability. While the headline is not new, the data and implications need to be heeded carefully. My synthesis: 1. Decide - strategically, not transactionally right before a renewal - if employee healthcare affordability matters to you and your organization. 2. Be willing to segment your population with local and workforce-based strategies. This does require the confidence to declare that “being all things to all people” inevitably fails many. 3. Price and communicate those new plans appropriately. As the article indicates, a financial payoff is necessary to drive value. 4. Doubling down on what hasn’t worked - flat PPOs where high-cost providers are treated equally to high-value providers, uncoordinated care, and tax-advantaged accounts - generally makes matters worse, not better. 5. Embrace change since the status quo is nothing more than a road to nowhere, again, subject to #1 above. We will have much more to say on this topic in the coming weeks! https://lnkd.in/ejeGSBnV

My response to the Prime Minister’s plans to tackle the UKs “sick note” culture. I think what the government is doing here is pushing its decades-long agenda to force the employer to deal with issues it used to itself; from auto-enrolment to the gross underfunding of the NHS that is driving record levels of corporate health insurance in the UK. What we are experiencing is a new version of privatisation. Or what I’m going to call ‘Corpowelfare’. While I have little confidence that the current government has the right attitude and sense of care to help people in this way, I do believe that employers do. The support they can provide, the benefits they offer - these are helping where the state isn’t and are likely our best bet to help people return to good quality work. My latest piece for HRZone . https://lnkd.in/eUY7ZFs9

This was published while the dust was settling in the aftermath of the SAG-AFTRA and Writers’ Guild of America strikes. International attention was on unions, and the world saw a high-profile example of what can be achieved when solidarity is in action. Activity has ebbed and flowed since then but maintained a steady momentum. The crux of this piece is evergreen. Unions are meant to improve and maintain their members' quality of life. Following that line of thinking, it makes perfect sense that policymakers, employers, and unions collaborate to improve health insurance coverage and control costs. Working together = a more sustainable and equitable healthcare system. #HealthInsurance #Unions #Impact

#Healthcare pricing is cloaked in secrecy and the rates #healthinsurance carriers have negotiated are based on "discounts" that give employers a false sense of getting a good, fair deal on their #employeebenefits plan. Unless employers (aka plan sponsors, aka fiduciaries) are in the driver's seat of their #healthplan (ideally self-funded or self-insured) AND have an experienced copilot (aka benefits professional/consultant) helping navigate #bestinclass vendors to administer the plan, pricing will remain an opaque challenge with little control to exercise true #fiduciaryduty. The industry is designed to confuse the real payers of healthcare: ✔ Employers ✔ Employees ✔ Patients ✔ Taxpayers Why not give employees better benefits and a wage increase while giving your business the opportunity for significant savings? The first step to making a change is having the courage to move outside the #statusquo and take control of your company's asset. It's not rocket science nor as difficult as brokers and insurance carriers would make it seem. Here to serve. #CAA #pricetransparency #affordability #affordablehealthcare #selffunding #selfinsured #COHP #stoploss #TPA #PBM https://lnkd.in/guimHAT4

The #IRS released the inflation-adjusted amounts for 2025 relevant to Health Savings Accounts (#HSAs) and high deductible health plans (#HDHPs). The table below summarizes those adjustments and other applicable limits. https://lnkd.in/es-M4YDS #AleraGroup #EmployeeBenefits #HIPAA #ACA 

Unpopular opinion: employers with less than 50 employees SHOULDN'T ever contribute to a group health plan. Instead, they should focus on paying their people as generously as possible. And then give their employees the option to route some of their paycheck through a cafeteria plan to pay for health insurance or dependent care on a pre-tax basis. Any money an employer would be willing to pay towards a group health plan should just go towards raises, and then each employee can choose what to do with that money. How is that not widely considered the most generous arrangement for groups of this size?

Industry pushes for PMI tax breaks and vocational rehab in Autumn Statement - Health & Protection (https://lnkd.in/eJmZi8ff) Industry experts have called on the chancellor to prioritise tax breaks to encourage greater uptake of private medical insurance. Many are wanting these tax breaks so that more employees can be offered health insurance as part of their employment package as there are a lot of companies out there who want to offer it, but are concerned about the costs. Smaller businesses are getting impacted the most from staff sickness, so making it more affordable for them to offer health insurance will not only help them reduce their sickness absenteeism but it would also create a better work environment. For more information on how WPA offer plans that provide greater reassurance on long term affordability for small business schemes, please get in contact. hadhamhealth@wpa-hcp.org.uk 07954 402863 #healthinsurance #privatemedical #health

Sheesh - income gaps, wealth disparities, whatever you want to call it….look how hard it is to “make it” when you take a job and commit to working your way up or keeping a secure job for your family despite maybe having a low salary to start. I just saw optum revenue went up 16%, which is a similiar trend across the board. Rx costs are only going one direction. Instead of giving a 16% raise, employees premiums went up with no raise….which equals taking a step back every year. Wait til GLP-1 meds get into plans (if they don’t already) - the single biggest oppprtunity for employers have to impact their health costs and it doesn’t have to be negative. This is a bigger population health convo and economic growth convo - but it can start here.

We meet every week with SMB/Mid size employers that want to offer pre-tax dollars to contract workers to go toward their health insurance costs. To date, we've had to tell them they can't; however, this could be changing as quickly as March of this year. What a competitive advantage this would be for organizations looking to retain 1099 employees. Really excited about the potential for this to accelerate ICHRA adoption for employers looking for a competitive advantage to retain contract worker talent. https://lnkd.in/gphc52N8