Innovative Approaches to Lowering Group Health Care Costs

With the ongoing economic and business impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, many Labor Funds and employers are facing unprecedented challenges regarding their members’ healthcare coverage. Below are some strategies self-funded group plans can consider to continue to offer robust healthcare benefits:

Benefit Changes – Changes in plan design, such as including care redirection, can help lower costs.

Tiered Benefits – Tiered benefit design can also reduce your healthcare costs by directing members to preferred high-quality, low cost providers. With this plan design approach with MagnaCare, members still have access to all of the providers in our full 220,000+ PPO network, but they will pay lower copays and cost shares if they choose the preferred providers. Savings for organizations can be anywhere from 5-20% depending on geography, utilization, and plan design.

Low Cost Limited Benefit Plans – Minimum Essential Coverage (MEC) are low-cost plans that give organizations an affordable path to providing healthcare coverage. MagnaCare MEC comes in three customizable varieties:

  • Basic MEC offers preventive coverage, such as well visits and screenings.
  • MagnaCare Enhanced MEC also covers preventive care, as well as urgent care visits, x-rays and labs.
  • MagnaCare Mini-Med plans include all the benefits of Enhanced MEC, plus ER, outpatient, and inpatient benefits.

Enhanced MEC and Mini-Med also give the option to add telemedicine, dental, and vision benefits. These limited-benefit, lower cost, alternative coverage plans can be offered to the members you choose, in conjunction with current plan options, or they can replace current benefits.

Contact us about these and other cost-saving approaches to your group health plan.