To my fellow benefits advisers: are we part of the problem associated with rising healthcare costs, or are part of the solution? It’s time to do a little soul searching.
Building a benefits package is like building a home — and as an industry, advisers are still getting paid more on poorly constructed healthcare homes. We build plans with the same status quo contractors (i.e., insurance carriers) year after year, delivering rate increases and narrower networks with less value — while simultaneously taking a pay increase. To make matters worse we give the members of our healthcare homes little or no transparency of real costs for services and provide them a credit card (i.e. member ID) with unlimited shopping.
