Hello!!

As we head into a busy fall and open enrollment season, many businesses will be shopping for and comparing health coverage. This year, employers are taking a look at employee benefits from a different perspective. That’s because the pandemic forced people to reconsider what they want from a health plan.

If you’re considering offering coverage or making changes to an existing plan, here are some things to consider.

Choice and Affordability

The CaliforniaChoice private exchange offers several advantages, including employee choice and affordability:

• A choice of HMO, PPO, EPO, and High Deductible Health Plan options from nine insurers in one program: Anthem Blue Cross, Cigna + Oscar, Health Net, Kaiser Permanente, Oscar, Sharp Health Plan, Sutter Health Plus, UnitedHealthcare, and Western Health Advantage
• Cost control through Defined Contribution: You select your premium contribution for employee coverage – a Fixed Percentage of 50% to 100% of a specific plan and/or benefit or a Fixed Dollar Amount for each employee
• Greater access to doctors, specialists, and hospitals – 80,000+ doctors and 400+ hospitals
• Options to add comprehensive Dental, Vision, Chiropractic, and Life Insurance benefits
• Value-added benefits through the Business Solutions Suite and Member Value Suite – including HR Support, Flexible Spending Accounts and Premium Only Plans for employees, COBRA or Cal-COBRA billing services, plus access to outstanding employee savings on entertainment, wellness, prescription drugs, and more
• Easy administration and renewal – one monthly bill for all employees’ coverage, one website and one toll-free number to manage your benefits, and simplified renewal allowing you to change your Defined Contribution and employees to change plans and stay in the program

Employers and employees love the freedom and flexibility CaliforniaChoice offers. For example, one of your employees might choose a PPO plan because of its broad provider network. Another might select an HMO because of its cost savings. With CaliforniaChoice, they both get what they need.

Who You Cover Is Up to You

Employers subject to the ACA’s Employer Mandate are required to offer health coverage to full-time employees and their eligible dependents. However, if you are not an Applicable Large Employer (with at least 50 full-time employees, including full-time equivalents), you get to choose who you want to cover – full-time employees only or FTEs and their dependents. It’s your choice. (If you don’t know if you’re an ALE, visit the ACA Information Center on the IRS website.)

More Reasons to Consider Benefits

Beyond helping your business attract and retain top talent, health insurance and other employee benefits offer other advantages. Generally, as a business owner, you can deduct most (if not all) of the cost of your employees’ health insurance as a normal business expense.

According to the IRS, if you pay for accident and health insurance, your payments are not considered employee wages – and they are not subject to Social Security, Medicare, and Federal Unemployment Tax Act (FUTA) taxes or federal income tax withholding. Additionally, if your business is incorporated, and you are the owner of the business, your health insurance costs are also deductible.

It’s Easy to Learn More

According to MetLife’s 19^th Annual U.S. Employee Benefit Trends Study 2021, because of the blending of home and work during 2020-2021, employees want (and are expecting) more flexibility. With CaliforniaChoice, it’s easy to give it to them – while also giving you the ability to control costs for your business.

To get a CaliforniaChoice quote for your employees, talk with your health insurance or employee benefits agent. It may surprise you to learn that using the services of a health insurance agent does not cost you anything. In fact, you could save money because an experienced agent has the expertise to help you find the most competitive benefits program. An agent can also ensure you and your employees have access to the doctors, specialists, and hospitals you want.

If you don’t already have an agent, we can help you find one.

When comparing health plans, it’s important to know if you’ll have access to the doctors, specialists, and hospitals you prefer. If you have a current patient relationship with a provider, you may want to avoid interruptions to your ongoing care.

The CaliforniaChoice Online Provider Search provides insight into these details. It helps you can find out if a doctor or hospital is part of a plan’s provider network. You have many health plans from which to choose: Anthem Blue Cross, Cigna + Oscar, Health Net, Kaiser Permanente, Oscar, Sharp Health Plan, Sutter Health Plus, UnitedHealthcare, and Western Health Advantage.

You can look up other care providers, too. That includes dentists, vision care providers, chiropractors, and acupuncturists.

Here’s how it works for a Medical search:

• Go to Provider Search on the CaliforniaChoice homepage
• Accept the Search terms of use
• Fill in some search information
  • Enter a city or ZIP Code (required)
  • Specify the doctor’s gender                     
  • Select a health plan/carrier         
  • Click “Find Your Doctor”              
• Review the results                               

You can narrow or widen a Medical search by adding:

• Hospital affiliation
• Language(s) spoken
• Preferred doctor’s last name
• Distance from your targeted ZIP Code or city

For Dental, Vision, and Chiropractic & Acupuncture searches:

• For Ameritas Dental, click “Continue” and search by city, distance, name, specialty, or other criteria.
• For MetLife Dental, search by ZIP Code, network, or practice name.
• For EyeMed Vision, you can search by ZIP Code or address.
• For VSP Vision, you can search by ZIP Code or address. Or, use “Advanced Search” and add Gender, Language, Doctor Network, Type of Doctor, Products, Services, Frame Brands, and Hours filters.
• For Chiropractic coverage, you’ll be sent to the Landmark Healthplan site. Once there, you can select your plan and search by Acupuncturist or Chiropractor.

Our Online Rx Search allows you to look up prescription drugs by brand, generic name, or health condition. You can see if each is included in the health plans you’re considering.

These online search tools are just two of the valuable resources available from CaliforniaChoice, the multi-carrier, employee-choice, small business private exchange.

To find out how CaliforniaChoice can help you expand your options for employees while still controlling costs, contact your employee benefits agent. If you do not already have an agent, we can help you find one.

When the Affordable Care Act (ACA) was signed into law in 2010, it was heralded as a way to make affordable health insurance available to more people. Supporters also touted it as a vehicle to implement reform for the country’s private health insurance marketplace (especially for individuals and small group purchasers). That included coverage for individuals with pre-existing health conditions, which were not always covered under the patchwork of health plans marketed prior to the ACA.

While the ACA has been challenged in court several times since it went into effect, it is the law of the land, and it’s been able to deliver on its promise to expand coverage to more Americans. Before the ACA was implemented, California’s uninsured rate was 17.2% in 2013. In 2020, it was 7.1%. According to the California Health Care Foundation (CHCF), the ranks of the uninsured have decreased by 3.7 million since the ACA took affect.

The CHCF says 1.5 million Californians get coverage through the state’s public exchange, Covered California. Another 12.5 million are covered through Medi-Cal, the state’s Medicaid program. The CHCF says that number includes 3.7 million residents who have health insurance resulting from the coverage expansion of the ACA.

Nearly half (48%) of Californians with health insurance get their coverage through their employer, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF). KFF is an American non-profit organization focused on health care issues and the nation’s role in global health policy; it is not affiliated with the Kaiser Permanente health plan.

Public and Private Exchanges Expand Choices

The ACA introduced public exchanges to much of the country more than a decade ago. California’s public exchange, Covered California, offers individual and family coverage as well as coverage for small business. Employers (and their employees) can choose from HMO and PPO plans from Blue Shield of California, Health Net, Kaiser Permanente, Oscar, and Sharp Health Plan.

California’s longest operating private health exchange, CaliforniaChoice, has been serving small businesses in the Golden State for 25 years. The CaliforniaChoice exchange opened its doors in 1996 – expanding options for employers looking to give employees a greater role in selecting health coverage that best meets their individual or family health care needs.

Today, CaliforniaChoice offers everything you and your employees want in a benefits program:

• Nine health plans to choose from (Eight plans are available for coverage effective in 2022)
• Cost control though Defined Contribution – you choose what you want to contribute to your employees’ plan premium: a fixed percentage (50% to 100%) or a fixed dollar amount
• Greater access to doctors, specialists, and hospitals – 80,000+ doctors and 400+ hospitals
• Dental, Vision, Chiropractic, and Life benefits can be easily added to any CalChoice plan
• Business Solutions Suite – no-cost services like HR support, Flexible Spending Accounts, COBRA or Cal-COBRA billing services, and Premium Only Plans for your employees
• Member Value Suite – access to outstanding savings for your employees on Dental, Vision, and Hearing services, entertainment, wellness, prescription drugs, and more
• Easy admin + consolidated billing – one bill each month for all employees’ coverage and one website and one toll-free number to manage your benefits
• Smart Decision Technology – making it easy to find the right health plan for your needs, search for a doctor in your plan network, and identify plans that include coverage for vital prescription drugs; you can even go paperless with online enrollment for employees
• Simplified renewal – maintain current coverage or change to a different plan at renewal; you can even adjust your premium contribution for employees; the choice is yours

Essential Health Benefits

One of the added benefits of the ACA is that it standardizes what must be included in individual and small group plans marketed as ACA compliant. This makes it easier for you to compare plans, knowing that compliant plans must include these Essential Health Benefits:

• Ambulatory patient services
• Emergency services
• Hospitalization
• Pregnancy, maternity, and newborn care (before and after birth)
• Mental health and substance use disorder services, including behavioral health treatment 
• Prescription drugs
• Rehabilitative and habilitative services and devices
• Laboratory services
• Preventive and wellness services (including chronic disease management)
• Pediatric services, including oral and vision care for children (adult dental and vision services are not essential health benefits)

Because insurers are required to include coverage for these essential benefits, when you shop you know plans in the same ACA metal tier offer comparable features and coverage. The four ACA metal tiers are Bronze, Silver, Gold, and Platinum. Each tier offers a different level of support for covered services, ranging from 60% of health care costs for Bronze plans, 70% for Silver plans, 80% for Gold plans, and 90% of costs for covered services under a Platinum plan.

The ABCs of HMOs, PPOs, and EPOs

Whether you get your employee coverage directly through an insurer, through a public or private exchange, or with the assistance of a broker, you will likely have a range of plan types available. Among the most popular options are Health Maintenance Organization (HMO) and Preferred Provider Organization (PPO) plans. Both have been around for decades. The Kaiser Family Foundation’s 2020 Employer Health Benefits Survey reports a 47% penetration rate for all firms for PPOs, while the penetration rate ranged from eight percent to 31% for other plans (HMO, Point of Service, and High Deductible Health Plans with a savings option). Those numbers have shifted somewhat from 2015, when PPO enrollment was five percent higher and most other enrollment was lower.

Exclusive Provider Organization (EPO) coverage is somewhat new, and it is a sort of hybrid between an HMO and PPO. An EPO offers a local network of doctors and hospitals from which members can choose; however, it often limits benefits outside the network. EPOs do allow members to self-refer to specialists who are part of the EPO network. Outside the network, there may be no or limited coverage. In California, Anthem Blue Cross and Oscar, as well as the Cigna + Oscar joint venture include EPO options in their portfolios.

Shopping for Your Business and Employees

The best way to learn about affordable local coverage available to you and your employees because of the Affordable Care Act is to talk with an employee benefits broker. Using a broker does not cost you more – and it can often help you save on your employees’ health coverage. That’s because your local broker will be familiar with providers that are part of each of the health plans available in your community. If you don’t have a broker, we can help you find one here.