Nevermind the oil companies....we need to worry about the health industry!

Do you remember when you were going to your job and you were happy with the benefits you received? You were supposed to wake up, get dressed, go to work, and with that career you were taken care of. These benefits included any of the following like health, vision, dental, long and short term disability, retirement plans like pensions or 401k's. This is no longer business, they are trying to save on the bottom line and us the workers are put on the chopping block. What does this mean?

Well you are probably reading this and you have so much loyalty to your company you think they wouldn't do this for you. Well hopefully this will open your eyes a little bit with the process of benefits, why they are available to the workplace, then what is the best choice for you when choosing employee benefits. Let's start with why are benefits available in the workplace. Well of course it is because your employer loves you so much and you do a great bang up job.....Sadly no, your employer is now offering these benefits because of two major reasons.

The benefits increase retention and the hiring process, people want to work somewhere they can have these benefits taken care of. Then second reason is these benefits are a tax write off for the company. If you think your health insurance is expensive that you are paying for, the full price of the health insurance is twice what you pay. Your employer has to take a minimum of 50% of the insurance that is offered. This gives the employer a write off of the funds that are spent on paying the half of your health insurance.

Also when it comes to choosing the correct health insurance for you, this is something that you need to talk to the person that is enrolling everyone. But we can do a quick rundown of the general idea here in the blog, remember though that every person is different which means what works for Bob does not work for Sally in some cases.

There are multiple metal tiers when it comes to health insurance there is bronze, silver, gold, and platinum. Bronze is for people that go to the doctor 1-3 times, silver is for 3-4 times, gold 4-5 times, and platinum is for those that go to the doc 5+ times every year. Even though bronze is the lowest premium it is the highest deductible, and no we are not talking about $4,000-$5,000 deductible. I am talking about as high as $16,000 deductible, health insurance and medical bills are the leading cause of bankruptcies in our country. To give you a great idea of how this can happen, I was in a motorcycle accident a few years ago.

This accident happened on the way to work and made me end up in a wheelchair for 4 months. My left kneecap was fractured and I was in need of surgery to repair the damage. The surgery full cost was $36,000 which my health insurance paid for $30,000 this still leaving me a bill of $6,000. Which if you did not know I did not budget my trip to work costing me $6,000. This is how easy it is for the health industry to send someone spiraling into debt by just choosing the wrong plan for them or one that has high deductibles and nothing to help with paying them.

Now with vision and dental insurance it is a little bit easier on the decision process. There are two types of insurance for them which is the high and the low plan, and yes that is the names of the plans. They obviously ran out of ideas or they wanted to make the process very easy to understand, mission complete on that one. As we said earlier we will say it again, remember that every person's situation is different from one another so it is a case by case basis to have the perfect plan chosen for you. If you need a person to help you walk through this process or another benefit process that you are looking into. Feel free to message me and myself or one of my colleagues can assist you. This is a major problem in our country so don't be a statistic when it comes to the decision process everyone. Thanks for checking out our blog and we look forward to seeing you next time.