Employee Benefit Plan Compliance

Hi, this is Connie Chiara with Corporate Benefit Partners. Let’s talk for just a minute about Employee Benefit Plan Compliance. Let’s face it, this can be a complicated topic, but one of the most important components of plan compliance are Employee Benefit Plan Notices. There are 12 all together. COBRA, HIPAA, FMLA, Medicare Part D Read More

What to look for in a Broker

When you’re looking at insurance broker services, it’s important to understand that they offer services for a lot of different things. So you have, first of all, their brokerage services, how they broker your business, how they approach the marketplace on your behalf. You also want to understand what kind of support services that they’re Read More

How Often Should I Meet with My Broker?

When you choose an insurance broker and you work with them throughout the year, you’re going to be in contact with them several times for all different kinds of reasons. Certainly during your open enrollment and your renewal time, you’re going to see that insurance broker several times and have several conversations. But throughout the Read More

Why I Need a Broker

Let’s talk about the distribution of health insurance. So if you’re Aetna, United, Cigna, Blue Cross and Blue Shield, how do you get your product to the consumer if you’re doing group insurance? The first thing I want to say is that they use the agency system to sell and service their products. So, unless Read More

It’s Time for PCORI Fees

Hi, this is Connie Chiara with Corporate Benefit Partners. Did you know that PCORI fees are due on July 31st? I know, right? What the heck is a PCORI fee? The Affordable Care Act requires health insurance issuers and self-insured plan sponsors to pay Patient-Centered Outcome Research Institution fees, PCORI fees. The fees are reported Read More

What to do with a Significant Renewal

If you’re an employer group and you have a hundred or more employees and you experience what we call a significant renewal, a big rate increase. Let’s say you got a rate increase of 35, 40 percent. You had a big claim, something went wrong in your group, you’re fully insured, your insurance carrier gives Read More

Health Insurance Underwriting with Over 100 Employees Part 2

Once you get over a hundred lives, probably around the 150 mark, insurance carriers are actually going to start to give you some claims information. So you’re going to be able to understand how much premium I pay every month and how much the insurance carrier is paying out in claims. And you’re also going Read More

Health Insurance Underwriting with Over 100 Employees Part 1

So, if you’re an employer with over 100 employees, and let’s say maybe between 100 and 500 lives, I think still the most popular way to buy coverage in this market is fully insured, especially in the state of Florida. But more and more, the larger you get, more and more, you’re credible for your Read More

PPO vs Point of Service Plan

So, in both a PPO plan and a Point of Service plan, you can go in-network for your care. Or if you want to pay more in deductible and out-of-pocket costs, you may choose to go out of network and there will be coverage for it. So, employers always say, okay, so what’s the difference Read More

What are the Types of Health Insurance Plans?

So let’s take a look at the types of health insurance plans that are available for employers to purchase. Of course we know what an HMO is, but there are different variations of an HMO. So for example, HMO we all know stands for Health Maintenance Organization. And the idea behind an HMO is that Read More