Selling Wellness Benefits in the Obamacare World

 

Think back to March 23, 2010.  President Obama just signed the Affordable Care Act. The law put in place comprehensive health insurance reforms that were to roll out over the next eight years.  Do you remember what you were thinking at this moment?  If you were like the other thousands of benefits brokers throughout the nation, you may have been thinking the sky was falling.

 

But instead of acting like Chicken Little, many benefit brokers saw this as the opportunity to stress to their employer clients the value of a healthy workplace by encouraging employees to spend more time and energy avoiding health risks before chronic conditions set in.

 

Dustin Boss, an insurance agent and lead educator for the Institute of Benefits and Wellness Professional (IBWP) authored an excellent article on this very subject for the April 2013 issue of Health Insurance Underwriter magazine, where he points out what he calls his 5-Step Benefits Risk Management Process:

1. Identify Risk – by getting over 90% participation in Health Risk Assessments.
2. Analyze Data – The aggregate of the Health Risk Assessments and Claim Data if it’s available
3. Control Risk – Using a customized Behavior Change Strategy based on Data Collected and Analyzed and getting over 70% engagement.
4. Finance – Choosing the best plan design to reward the employer and employee.
5. Measure – This is where you find out if your plan performed based on the results.

 

To read the entire article as it appeared in Health Insurance Underwriter, click here:

 

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